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XTbe Cambrifcoe Xiterature Scries 

ESSAYS ON 

MILTON and ADDISON 



BY 

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 

Edited by 

J. GRIFFITH AMES, A.B., B.Litt. 

(Oxford) 
Professor of English, Illinois College, facksonville, Illinois 



ov nulX alia noXv 



BENJ. H. SANBORN & CO. 
BOSTON, U. S. A. 



TFfF LfBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copied Recsived 

f8 1902 

CotvqiOHT EtfTITV 

(CLASS O, XXo No. 

7-1 * # k 
COPY 8 









Copyright, 1902, 
By J. Griffeth Ames. 



Stanbope press 

H. GILSON COMPANY 
BOSTON, U.S.A. 









CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION : PAGE 

I. Memoir of Macai'lay ix 

II. Sketch of Milton's Life ....... xv 

III. Macaulay's Style xxiii 

IV. SUGGESTIONS TO STUDENTS XXVI 

V. Bibliography xxviii 

Milton 1 

The Life and Writings of Addison 103 

Notes TO THE Essay ON MlLTON 261 

Notes to the Essay on Addison 281 



I^TTEODUCTIO^". 



I. MEMOIR OF MACAULAY. 

Thomas Babington Macaulay, the eldest son of Zach- 
ary Macaulay, well known as a philanthropist, was born 
at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, October 25, 1800. Two 
years later his father moved to Clapham, where young 
Thomas passed the next ten years of his life. As a child 
he was extremely precocious, learning to read at the age 
of three, acquiring knowledge with great rapidity, and 
seldom, if ever, forgetting anything that he had read, 
seen, or heard. His biograjnier and nephew, Sir George 
Trevelyan, says of him: "He read books more quickly 
than other people skimmed them, and skimmed them as 
fast as any one else could turn the leaves. 1 ' Add to 
this wonderful gift another equally wonderful, but far 
more valuable, the gift of a stupendous and unerring 
memory, and you have the secret of Macaulay's immense 
acquirements. One instance out of many must sullice to 
show both the rapidity of his reading and the magnitude of 
his memory, even as a child. Calling with his father on 
a friend, Macaulay, still a small boy, sat by the window 



X MACAULAY' S ESSAYS. 

reading Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel and Marmion, and 
finished both while the two men were talking. In the 
evening he surprised his father by telling him what he 
had read, and reciting from memory whole pages of both 
poems. 

Macaulay very early in life took to writing. At the age 
of seven he began a Compendium of Universal History, 
and at eight wrote a treatise intended ' ' to convert the na- 
tives of Malabar to Christianity." It was in this year also 
that, having read the Lay of the Last Minstrel and Mar- 
mion, he composed three cantos of a poem in imitation of 
Scott, and called it the Baltic of Cheviot. In all these and 
other youthful compositions he showed " perfect correct- 
ness both in grammar and in spelling, made his meaning 
uniformly clear, and was scrupulously accurate in his 
punctuation." 

Despite all his precocity, all his ability, and cleverness, 
Macaulay was by no means a spoiled child. He was a 
simple, merry boy, free from any trace of self-conscious- 
ness or conceit. He thought that all boys knew as much as 
he ; and even as a man, though aware of his own powers, 
he saw nothing in them to cause him to be exalted above 
other men. 

In 1812 Macaulay was sent to a private school, near 
Cambridge, where he studied Greek, Latin, and mathe- 
matics. His leisure time he spent, as might be expected, 
in reading, for literature was his chief delight. Among 
the books that he eagerly devoured were Milton's Paradise 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

Lost and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, of which he re- 
marked afterwards, that if all the copies of these two 
books were to be destroyed he would undertake to repro- 
duce them both from memory. 

At the age of eighteen Macaulay wisely entered Trinity 
College, Cambridge. His career here, however, was not re- 
markable, though he won several prizes for poems, essays, 
and declamations, lie naturally made many friends, and 
in various ways cultivated and developed his social, con- 
versational, and oratorical powers. In theUnioD Debating 
Society, where he ardently discussed the political questions 
of the day, he first turned his attention seriously to poli- 
tics. When he went to college he had every reason to 
expect an inheritance sufficient to enable him to follow 
his literary inclinations without depending upon a profes- 
sion. But his father met with reverses, and Macaulay was 
obliged to support himself. He sustained his disappoint- 
ment bravely, immediately took a few pupils, and began 
to write for the magazines. In 1824 he was elected a 
Fellow of Trinity College, with a fixed annual salary, and 
two years later he was called to the bar. 

Interest in Macaulay as a writer bad been aroused in the 
proprietors of the Edinburgh Review, who had seen some 
of his articles in Knight's Quarterly, and had heard and 
praised a speech which he had delivered at a meeting of 
the Anti-Slavery Society. They, therefore, invited him 
to write for the Review, and in August, 1825, published 
that first brilliant Essay on Milton which heads the long list 



Xii MACAULAY' S ESSAYS. 

of Macaulay 's celebrated essays. His reputation was im- 
mediately established. From that time his popularity, as 
well as that of the Review, increased with every new essay 
from his pen. He became one of its regular contributors, 
and continued to write for it during the greater part of his 
life. 

In 1828 Macaulay was made Commissioner in Bank- 
ruptcy, and two years later was elected a member of Par- 
liament for Calne. In this year he delivered his first 
speech in the House of Commons ; but it was not until 
1831, when speaking upon the second reading of the 
Reform Bill, in opposition to Peel, that he manifested his 
abilities as an orator. This speech created such a sen- 
sation that even his adversaries compared him with the 
celebrated orators of the palmy days of Parliament. 

Macaulay was now a lion of the day, courted and ad- 
mired by the social and political celebrities of London; 
and " his wide reading, his phenomenal memory, his bril- 
liant conversation, sparkling with spoils from many litera- 
tures, 11 helped to make him a literary as well as social 
leader. He thoroughly enjoyed the world and the many 
substantial comforts within his reach. His annual income 
from his fellowship at Trinity College, from his contri- 
butions to the Review, and from his commissionership, 
amounting in all to about £900 ($4500) , enabled him to 
live well and amid congenial spirits. But this income 
soon began to diminish; for his fellowship, tenable for 
seven years, was just expiring, and the commissionership 



IN TR OD UC TION. Xlll 

in bankruptcy was abolished. Macaulay was thus in 
rather straitened circumstances when he was offered a 
seat on the Supreme Council of India, as legal adviser. 
The salary attached to the post was large, £10,000 
($50,000) a year, for five years. Although he was averse 
to going to India, and thus lessening his chances for ad- 
vancement at home, he saw that the offer was not one to 
be neglected by a man in his circumstances. He, there- 
fore, accepted the position, and sailed for India in Feb- 
ruary, 1834. 

During his stay in India, Macaulay, by his ability and 
good sense, accomplished much for the welfare of the 
country. He showed himself a powerful advocate of the 
freedom of the Indian press; he composed an admirable 
digest of criminal law, known as the Indian Penal Code ; 
and he advocated and put into practice an enlightened sys- 
tem of education, introducing among the natives the study 
of English and of English methods. 

Upon his return to England, Macaulay again settled 
in London. While still contributing to the Edinburgh 
Review, he began the work which, until his death, occupied 
the greater part of his leisure time, — his famous History 
of England. This history he purposed to bring down 
from the accession of James II. to the death of George III. ; 
but politics, writing for the Review, and failing health 
prevented his completing it. In 1839, shortly after his 
return from India, he was elected a member of Parliament 
for Edinburgh, and in September of the same year was 



XIV MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

given a seat in the Cabinet as Secretary at War. In 1841, 
on the fall of the ministry, he was again returned to Par- 
liament by Edinburgh ; but for a time spoke only occa- 
sionally, preferring to spend his leisure hours upon his 
II is/ or 1 1 and his essays. It was during this lull in his 
political exertions that he wrote for the Review the cele- 
brated essays on Clive, Warren Hastings, and Chatham, 
and that he raised by his love, his marvelous skill, and 
his genius that "magnificent statue of the great writer 
and moralist of the last age" — Joseph Addison. No- 
where throughout Maeaulay's writings is the gift of his 
stupendous memory more clearly discernible than in this 
essay. His wonderful fund of illustration cannot fail to 
strike even the most hasty and superficial reader. 

Macaulay's connection with the Edinburgh Review 
ceased in 1844. From that time on he devoted himself 
wholly to his History and to politics. In 1846 he was 
once more elected to Parliament for Edinburgh and was 
made Paymaster-General of the Army. The following 
year, for the first time, he met defeat at the Parliamentary 
elections. This, though he was afterwards returned to 
Parliament by Edinburgh, was the real end of his politi- 
cal career. Nor did he regret it ; for it gave him much 
more time to work on the subject that was now absorbing 
all his leisure moments — his History of England. So 
diligently did lie work at this, that in 1848 he was able 
to publish the first two volumes. The same year he was 
elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University ; and was 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

offered the professorship of Modern History at Cambridge, 
which he declined. 

At the price of health and strength, Macaulay succeeded 
in publishing the third and fourth volumes of his History 
in December, 1855. Now, too late, he resigned his seat 
in Parliament, and promised himself the rest and quiet he 
had so truly earned by his life of almost ceaseless mental 
labor. Lord Palmerston, in 1857, created him a peer, and 
he took the title of Baron Macaulay of Rothley. His last 
distinction, however, he did not live long to enjoy. 
Though he still continued to work at his History, and occa- 
sionally contributed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, his 
strength was gradually failing. On the twenty-eighth of 
December, 1859, he died suddenly, but quietly, " sitting in 
his library in an easy chair." He was buried in the Poets' 
Corner in Westminster Abbey, at the foot of the statue of 
his admired and beloved Addison. 

n. SKETCH OF MILTON'S LIFE. 

Although Macaulay's essay on Milton " excited greater 
attention than any article which had appeared not immedi- 
ately connected wit h the politics of the day;" though its 
rhetoric is brilliant, its language and structure clear, it 
is, for some reasons, not considered one of his best pro- 
ductions. He himself said, " This essay . . . which was 
written when the author was fresh from college, and which 
contains scarcely a paragraph such as his matured judg- 



XVI MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

ment approves, still remains overloaded with gaudy and un- 
graceful ornament. 1 ' Mr. Frederick Harrison has charged 
Macaulay's description of the Restoration with extrava- 
gance, and others have detected various faults and inaccu- 
racies in the essay. It is indeed strange that Macaulay, 
fired by the splendor and beauty of Milton's poetry, devotes 
less than half a dozen lines to those exquisite poems, the 
Ode on the Nativity and the elegy Lyddas. The gravest 
fault of the essay, however, is that it lacks the true spirit 
of unbiassed historical investigation and criticism. Ma- 
caulay was a man of strong prejudices. He has drawn a 
portrait of Milton which represents the man as we all 
love to admire him, but which is distorted and untrue. 
I lis Milton is too ideal. Carried away by his admiration 
for Milton's poetry and the beauty of the Areopagitica, as 
well as by his esteem for the man himself, with whose po- 
litical ideas he sympathized, Macaulay has drawn the poet 
as an earnest and consistent advocate and lover of human 
liberty and freedom of thought. Such, indeed, he was, 
but it was freedom for his own religious and political par- 
tisans only. Towards his adversaries he was bitter and 
intolerant. Nowhere does Milton condemn Cromwell's 
tyranny and oppression of the Roman Catholics and the 
Presbyterians. A much truer idea of Milton's real nature 
and of his supposed love of liberty can be found in his 
prose writings, especially in his essay on Peace irith the 
Irish Rebels. It should, however, be borne in mind that 
Macaulay was a Whig, and that this essay on Milton had 



INTRODUCTION. XV11 

a political as well as a literary side, and was intended to 
further the cause of his party as it existed in 1825. 

As Macaulay takes for granted a knowledge of the life 
and times of Milton, it is advisable, before reading the 
essay, to read the following brief account of Milton's life. 

John Milton was born in Cheapside, London, Dec. 9, 
1608. His father was a scrivener in prosperous circum- 
stances, and lived with his family in London until Milton 
left home for Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1624-25. 
Here, where he studied for seven years, — four as an 
undergraduate, and three as a candidate for the degree of 
Master of Arts, — his intellectual preeminence was quickly 
acknowledged. He showed signs of his poetical genius 
by composing, besides many Latin rhetorical pieces in 
verse, several English poems, the chief among which are 
the Ode on the Death of a Fair Infant, the beautiful 
Christmas ode On the Morning of Chrisfs Nativity, and 
the celebrated sonnet On Arriving at the Age of Twenty- 
three. 

Milton's father had meanwhile retired from business 
and gone to live at the little village of Horton, not far 
from Eton. Here Milton went upon quitting the Univer- 
sity. He had been educated with a view of taking Holy 
Orders; but being unwilling to take the necessary oaths, 
he turned his thoughts for a moment, first to the law, and 
then to literature. He, therefore, decided to settle quietly 
at Horton, and remained with his father until 1688- Dur- 
ing these six years he wrote IS Allegro and II Penseroso, 



XVU1 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

which are said by Mr. Leslie Stephen to be * * the most 
perfect record in the language, of the impression made by 
natural scenery upon a thorough scholar. 1 ' Here, too, he 
wrote the famous masque of Comus, which was performed 
in 1634, and the last of the great poems of his youthful 
period — Lycidas (1637), — the grandest elegy in the 
English language. Of this early poetry, Mr. Stephen 
says, "It would by itself entitle him to the front rank 
in our literature, and has a charm of sweetness which is 
absent from the sublimer works of his later years." 

The politics of England were at this time much dis- 
turbed. Charles I., daily making himself more unpopular, 
had continually quarreled with Parliament, and had de- 
cided to do without its assistance, and to take over the 
entire government into his own hands. Laud and Strafford 
were his advisers and his tools ; and the High Church and 
ritualistic doctrines of the one, and the persecutions 
and intrigues of the other, forced a spirit of discontent 
and revolt upon all parties not entirely agreeing with 
them. The Puritans, the Presbyterians, the Indepen- 
dents, all murmured against the want of a Parliament and 
against this ritualistic tendency, which threatened to bring 
the Church of England under the supremacy of Rome. 
Such was the condition of affairs when, in 1638, Milton left 
England for a sixteen months 1 tour through France and 
Italy. 

Upon his return to England he found politics even 
worse than before, and almost immediately turned his at- 



INTRODUCTION. xix 

tention from poetry and higher literature to ecclesiastical 
controversies. Charles, m attempting to force Episcopacy 
upon Scotland, soon roused the whole country to the verge 
of civil war. Attacks upon Episcopacy were immediately 
forthcoming, and the struggle was continued for some 
time by means of pamphlets and books, many of which 
were written by Milton, who devoted twenty years to this 
kind of political and ecclesiastical warfare. All these 
pamphlets are characteristic of the man. " Thev breathe 
throughout a vehemence of passion which distorts the 
style, perplexes the argument, and disfigures his invective 
with unworthy personalities. " From their spirit and 
tone, it is clear that Milton was at the time in favor of 
the " Root and Branch Reformers," as the staun chest Pres- 
byterians were called. 

Toward the end of 1(342 the great Civil War broke 
out; the war between the Parliamentarians, taking the 
part of the majority of the House of Commons, on one 
side, and the Royalists, supporting the King and the 
majority of the nobles, on the other. Milton was, of 
course, a Parliamentarian. Unfortunately disputes arose 
among the Parliamentarians themselves, which divided 
their forces. 

On Nov. 24, 1644, Milton published the best and most 
popular of his prose works, the Areopagitica, or Speech 
for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, a noble defense of 
the freedom of the press. From this work and from other 
writings, it is evident that Milton was now siding with the 



XX MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

Independent branch of the Parliamentary party. The 
Presbyterian Scots and Charles had come to terms on con- 
dition that he would establish universal Presbytery in 
England, and allow no toleration. This infuriated the 
Independents, who finally captured the King and marched 
him triumphantly to London. Charles, however, escaped 
to the Isle of Wight, where he plotted with the Presby- 
terians to put down the Independents if he should regain 
the throne. Thus in 1648 began the second part of the 
Civil War. The Scots marched into England, but were 
met and defeated at Preston by Cromwell and his invinci- 
ble army. Charles was brought from the Isle of Wight, 
tried at London by a High Court of Justice, and executed 
Jan. 30, 1649. 

Then began a republican form of government for 
England, to which Milton lent his full support, defending 
it and the conduct of the army in a treatise called The 
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. He was rewarded for 
his services by the appointment of ' Latin Secretary to the 
Council of State, 1 in which position he conducted the 
foreign and diplomatic correspondence of the Common- 
wealth with great credit. At this time he was also em- 
ployed by the new government to defend it against the 
written attacks of its enemies. There appeared a book, 
called Eikon Basilike (The Royal Image), said to have 
been written b}^ the late King Charles, though now 
known to have been the work of another, containing the 
thoughts and prayers of the King during his imprisonment. 



INTRODUCTION. XXI 

The government was well aware that this work, by its pa- 
thetie tone, was likely to make an unfavorable and danger- 
ous impression on the minds of many who already were 
beginning to regret the exeention of Charles, and it con- 
sequently employed Milton to write a reply. This he 
did in a work entitled Iconoclastes (The Image Breaker) . 
In 1(350 Salmasins published in Holland a work in 
defense of Charles, called Defemio Regis. This, too, 
Milton was requested to answer, and he replied in 1651, 
in his Dcfensio Populi Anglicani. 

Strange as it may appear, Milton, an adherent of the 
Parliamentary party, had, in 1643, married the daughter 
of a Cavalier, — Mary Powell, a girl of only seventeen. The 
two were ill matched in tastes, in disposition, and in age, 
and the girl soon growing tired of Milton's philosophical 
life, returned to her father. Her conduct and the sepa- 
ration set Milton to writing on divorce, and he produced a 
work in which he held that " indisposition, unfittness, or 
contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature un- 
changeable," is amply sufficient reason for divorce. In 
1645, however, when the Royalists had been mined and 
the Powells among them, Mary was persuaded to return 
to her husband who, after some donbts, was finally 
induced to receive her. They lived together after this 
until 1652, when she died, leaving Milton with three 
daughters. 

By his continual application to study and by his inces- 
sant writing, Milton had so weakened his eyes that in 



xxii MACAULAY\S ESSAYS. 

1652 he became totally blind. Thus with this infirmity, 
and the loss of his wife, Milton led a cheerless and 
lonely life until 1656 when he again married. With 
Catherine Woodcock, his second wife, he seems to have 
lived contentedly until her death fifteen months after the 
marriage. Milton's home was not a happy one until 
after his third marriage in 1663, when he succeeded in 
securing a careful and loving wife in Elizabeth Minshull, 
who survived him. He continued as secretary to the 
Commonwealth throughout Cromwell's life, and to the end 
advocated the cause of the Protector. Finally, however, 
in 1660, the Royalists gained the upper hand and the 
Restoration was accomplished. It is strange that the 
great poet and the writer of so many anti-royalist works 
was not condemned to death with many other of the 
regicides. The only punishment he seems to have suf- 
fered was that of having all his political writings 
burned. He devoted the remaining years of his life to 
poetical labors. 

In 1658 Milton had begun to write Paradise Lost. 
He was assisted in this by his friends, some of his earlier 
pupils, by his nephews and his daughters who read and 
wrote for him. But his daughters soon tired of the in- 
cessant labor of reading to him books that they could not 
understand, and at last deserted him. It was then that 
Milton married his third wife. In 1665 he finished 
Paradise Lost, and in 1671 Paradise Regained and Samson 
Agonistes appeared. These were his last important 



IN TR OD UC TION. xxiii 

writings. On Nov. 8, 1674, he died, at the age of sixty- 
five, and was buried in the church of St. Giles, Cripple- 
gate. 

in. MACAULAY'S STYLE. 

" Lord Macaulay must be classed among the popular 
writers of English Prose in the first half of the present 
century. . . His prose may be said to have been inferior 
to that of no one of his contemporaries in the hold which 
it had upon the respect and admiration of the English 
people. Since his death his prose still has a substantial 
place in English Letters. The one who denies his claim 
to be ranked among the first examples of English prose 
style, must see to it that he be prepared to maintain his 
difficult position. It is probably true, that even at this 
day no history of England, covering the era which 
Macaulay treats, is oftener read, or read with more in- 
telligent interest, than is his. It is also probable that 
the modern English student is as familiar with Macaulay's 
Essays as with those of any other prominent essayist of 
the century." What is the reason for this ? 

When, in 1825, Francis Jeffrey, the Editor of the Edin- 
burgh Rt view, wrote to Macaulay the often quoted sen- 
tence : " The more I think, the less I can conceive where 
you picked up that style, " he pointed out the mainspring 
of our authors popularity. That style which has made 
Macaulay's writings so popular with all classes, owes its 



XXIV MACAULAY 'S ESSAYS. 

charm largely to a few well defined elements. In the 
first place stands clearness, the prime requisite of all 
good Avriting. As Dean Milman has well said, " One 
may read a sentence of Maeaulay's twice to judge of its 
full force, never to comprehend its meaning.'" ( Vide 
Essay on Addison, Par. 22.) The reasons for this great 
clearness are not far to seek. Macaulay avoids complica- 
tions of clauses that may confuse ; he is straightforward 
and positive ; but above all he has at his command, 
besides his powerful faculty of organization and arrange- 
ment, a wealth of illustration that throws light upon his 
every paragraph. A favorite method of enforcing the 
point that he wishes to make, so that it can by no means 
be misunderstood, is his abundant use of repetition. 
He seems, as Taine has said, to have made a wager with 
his reader and said to him, " Be as absent in mind as you 
will, as stupid, as ignorant; in vain you will be ignorant, 
you shall learn ; I will repeat the same idea in so many 
forms. 1 ' {Vide Essay on Milton, Par. 81.) 

In addition to this main feature of Macaulay's style 
the student should note its strong rhetorical quality. 
Macaulay is fond of contrast, balance, or antithesis ; he 
delights in setting word over against word, clause against 
clause, and sentence against sentence. ( Vide Essay on 
Milton, Par. 61.) "Of climax, the coping-stone of the 
emphatic style,' 1 says T. E. Kebbel, "Macaulay is a 
master, and this it is which gives to his rapid antitheses 
a strength and cogency of their own. After he has accu- 



INTRODUCTION. XXV 

mulated his evidence and brought out point after point in 
his own favor . . he never fails at the right moment to 
give the final blow which drives his conclusion home and 
leaves it embedded in our own minds to the exclusion of 
all subordinate ideas which might weaken our perception 
of its force. 1 ' (Vide Essay on Addison, last half of 
Par. 1(37.) 

Macaulay, however, through his desire for effect, was 
too frequently led to obtain force by the use of rhetorical 
devices, and he thereby at times sacrificed fact to form. 
"Exact balance cannot long be kept up without damage 
to strict truth,' 1 and in this practice of Macaulay 's lies his 
chief defect as an historian. ( Vide Essay on Milton, Par. 
77.) In this connection it is also to be observed that 
Macaulay is a partial historian, an historian with a bias, 
allowing not infrequently "his Whig propensities to get 
the better of strict justice 11 and truth. 

One more characteristic of Macaulay's writings which it 
is well to note, is his keen perception and delineation of 
character — his power of bringing before our mind's eye, 
as living beings, the personages of whom he is writing. 
Many instances of this personal portraiture, often done 
with only a few bold but vivid strokes, may be found 
throughout his writings. {Vide Essay on Addison, 
Par. 70.) 

The following essays, and especially the Essay on Milton, 
illustrate well the following characteristics of Macaulay's 
style — his fondness for balanced sentences, antithesis, 



XX vi MACAULAY >S ESSAYS. 

periodic sentences, similes, metaphors and climax, his 
clearness, narrative power, eloquence, invective, repeti- 
tion, illustration and erudition. 

IV. SUGGESTIONS TO STUDENTS. 

The following suggestions, though few in number, will, 
it is hoped, prove useful to those students who wish to 
derive the greatest benefit from their study of the essays. 

I. Read in the Introduction the sketch of Macaulay and 
also the section dealing with his style. 

II. Read the essays through, merely for pleasure, noti- 
cing the clearness, directness and force of the author's style, 
and the abundance, variety and aptness of his allusions. 
Many of the references and illustrations will be obscure, 
but the general scope and plan of the essays will be clear. 

III. After this rapid reading the student should make 
himself familiar with the period of history covered by 
each essay. In the case of the essay on Milton, he should 
read some account of Milton's life ; should read about the 
Stuart Kings, about Cromwell, the Puritans, the Civil 
War, and the Revolution of 1688. The following list 
may be helpful : — 

Mark Pattison. Life of Milton. (E. M. L.) 
J. R. Lowell. Milton. Among My Books. Vol. II. 
Walter Bagehot. John Milton. Literary Studies. Vol.1. 
T. B. Macaulay. History of England. Vol. I. chs. i. , ii. 
S. R. Gardiner. History of the Civil War. 



INTR OD UC TION. XXVll 

S. R. Gardiner. The Puritan Revolution. 

J. R. Green. History of the English Peoph . Bk. VII. 

chs. i., v.-xii. 

Thomas Carlyle. Cromwell. 

E. Hale. The Fall of the Stuarts. 

With the knowledge derived from this reading the stu- 
dent should then carefully go over the essay with special 
reference to paragraphs 49-S7, and with the aid of the 
notes try to appreciate Macaulay's references, allusions, 
conclusions, and style. 

The student should next read as much of Milton's Para- 
dise Lost, Comus, Samson Agonistes, and Short Poems 
as his time will permit. lie should then read the essay 
once more, or at least that part of it included between 
paragraphs 8-49. With tins last reading he should have 
attained the object of the study of this essay — a knowl- 
edge and appreciation of Macaulay and of his writing, and 
through him, of John Milton, the citizen, statesman, and 
poet. 

IV. In the case of the essay on Addison, the student 
should read of Addison, his times and his contemporaries, 
from the following list of books : — 

J. W. Courthope. Life of Addison. (E. M. L.) 
W. M. Thackeray. English Humorists. (Addison and 
Steele.) 

J. R. Green. Essays "{Addison. 
John Dennis. Age of Pope. 



XXviii MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

T. B. Macaulay. History of England. 

J. R. Green. History of the English People. Vol. IV. 
Bk. VIII., chs. iii. iv. 

W. E. H. Lecky. History of England in the Eighteenth 
Century. Vol. I. 

The student should then carefully re-read the essay, 
paying careful attention to the notes. He should by all 
means read at least ten of the essays of the Spectator, 
which may well be chosen from those mentioned by Ma- 
caulay in his essay on Addison. 

V. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

BIOGRAPHICAL. 

G. O. Trevelyan. Life of Macaulay. 2 vols. 
J. C. Morrison. Life of Macaulay. (E. M. L.) 
Dictionary of National Biography . Article on Mara ulay . 

CRITICAL. 

Frederick Harrison. Early Victorian Literature, p. 64. 
Leslie Stephen. Hours in a Library. Vol. IIL, p. 343. 
Walter Bagehot. Literary Studies. 
George Saintsbury. Corrected Lmprcssions, p. 79, p. 88. 
John Morley. Miscellanies. Vol. I. 

The best edition of Macaulay's Critical and Historical 
Essays is that published by Longmans, Green & Co., 
3 vols. The best cheap edition is published in 2 vols, by 
the same firm. 



MACAIILAY'S ESSAYS. 



MILTON. 

Joannis Miltoni, Angli de Doctrina Christiana libri duo post- 
humi. A treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from 
the Holy Scriptures alone. By John Milton, translated 
from the original by Charles R. Sumner, M.A., etc., etc., 
1825. 

1. Towards the close of the year 1823, Mr. 
Lemon, deputy keeper of the state papers, in the 
course of his researches among the presses of his 
office, met with a large Latin manuscript. With 
it were found corrected copies of the foreign de- 5 
spatches written by Milton, while he filled the 
office of Secretary, and several papers relating to 
the Popish Trials and the Rye-house Plot. The 
whole was wrapped up in an envelope, super- 
scribed To Mr. Skinner, Merchant. On exami- 10 
nation, the large manuscript proved to be the long 
lost Essay on the Doctrines of Christianity, 

1 



2 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

which, according to Wood and Toland, Milton 
finished after the Restoration, and deposited with 
Cyriac Skinner. Skinner, it is well known, held 
the same political opinions with his illustrious 

5 friend. It is therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon 
conjectures, that he may have fallen under the 
suspicions of the government during that perse- 
cution of the Whigs which followed the dissolution 
of the Oxford Parliament, and that, in conse- 

10 quence of a general seizure of his papers, this 
work may have been brought to the office in 
which it has been found. But whatever the 
adventures of the manuscript may have been, no 
doubt can exist that it is a genuine relic of the 

15 great poet. 

2. Mr. Sumner, who was commanded by His 
Majesty to edit and translate the treatise, has ac- 
quitted himself of his task in a manner honorable 
to Ins talents and to his character. His version 

20 is not, indeed, very easy or elegant ; but it is 
entitled to the praise of clearness and fidelity. 
His notes abound with interesting quotations, and 
have the rare merit of really elucidating the text. 
The preface is evidently the work of a sensible 



MILTON. 3 

and candid man, firm in his own religious opin- 
ions, and tolerant towards those of others. 

3. The book itself will not add much to the 
fame of Milton. It is, like all his Latin works, 
well written, though not exactly in the style of 5 
the prize essays of Oxford and Cambridge. There 
is no elaborate imitation of classical antiquity, no 
scrupulous purity, none of the ceremonial clean- 
ness which characterizes the diction of our academ- 
ical Pharisees. The author does not attempt to 10 
polish and brighten his composition into the 
Ciceronian gloss and brilliancy. He does not, in 
short, sacrifice sense and spirit to pedantic re- 
finements. The nature of his subject compelled 
him to use many words 15 

"That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp." 

But he writes with as much ease and freedom as 
if Latin were his mother tongue ; and, where he 
is least happy, his failure seems to arise from the 
carelessness of a native, not from the ignorance of 20 
a foreigner. We may apply to him what Denham 
with great felicity says of Cowley. He wears the 
garb, but not the clothes, of the ancients. 



4 MACAULAY\S ESSAYS. 

4. Throughout the volume are discernible the 
traces of a powerful and independent mind, eman- 
cipated from the influence of authority, and de- 
voted to the search of truth. Milton professes 

5 to form his system from the Bible alone ; and his 
digest of scriptural texts is certainly among the 
best that have appeared. But he is not always 
so happy in his inferences as in his citations. 

5. Some of the heterodox doctrines which he 
10 avows seem to have excited considerable amaze- 
ment, particularly his Arianism, and his theory on 
the subject of polygamy. Yet we can scarcely 
conceive that any person could have read the 
Paradise Lost without suspecting him of the 

15 former ; nor do we think that any reader, ac- 
quainted with the history of his life, ought to be 
much startled at the latter. The opinions which 
he has expressed respecting the nature of the 
Deity, the eternity of matter, and the observation 

20 of the Sabbath, might, we think, have caused 
more just surprise. 

6. But we will not go into the discussion of 
these points. The book, were it far more ortho- 
dox or far more heretical than it is, would not 



MIL TON. 5 

much edify or corrupt the present generation. 
The men of our time are not to be converted or 
perverted by quartos. A few more days, and this 
essay will follow the Defensio Populi to the dust 
and silence of the upper shelf. The name of its 5 
author, and the remarkable circumstances attend- 
ing its publication, will secure to it a certain 
degree of attention. For a month or two it will 
occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing- 
room, and a few columns in every magazine ; and 10 
it will then, to borrow the elegant language of the 
play-bills, be withdrawn, to make room for the 
forthcoming novelties. 

7. We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the 
interest, transient as it may be, which this work 15 
has excited. The dexterous Capuchins never 
choose to preach on the life and miracles of a 
saint till they have awakened the devotional feel- 
ings of their auditors by exhibiting some relic of 
him, a thread of his garment, a lock of his hair, or 20 
a drop of his blood. On the same principle we 
intend to take advantage of the late interesting 
discovery, and, Avhile this memorial of a great and 
good man is still in the hands of all, to say some- 



6 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

thing of his moral and intellectual qualities. Nor, 
we are convinced, will the severest of our readers 
blame us if, on an occasion like the present, wo 
turn for a short time from the topics of the day, 

5 to commemorate, in all love and reverence, the 
genius and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the 
statesman, the philosopher, the glory of English 
literature, the champion and the martyr of English 
liberty. 

10 8. It is by his poetry that Milton is best known; 
and it is of his poetry that we wish first to speak. 
By the general suffrage of the civilized world, his 
place has been assigned among the greatest masters 
of the art. His detractors, however, though out- 

15 voted, have not been silenced. There are many 
critics, and some of great name, who contrive in 
the same breath to extol the poems and to decry 
the poet. The works they acknowledge, consid- 
ered in themselves, may be classed among the 

20 noblest productions of the human mind. But 
they will not allow the author to rank with those 
great men who, born in the infancy of civilization, 
supplied, by their own powers, the want- of in- 
struction, and, though destitute of models them- 



MILTON. 7 

selv.es, bequeathed to posterity models which defy 
imitation. Milton, it is said, inherited what his 
predecessors created ; he lived in an enlightened 
age; he received a finished education; and we 
must, therefore, if Ave would form a just estimate 5 
of his powers, make large deductions in consider- 
ation of these advantages. 

9. We venture to say, on the contrary, para- 
doxical as the remark may appear, that no poet 
has ever had to struggle with more unfavorable 10 
circumstances than Milton. He doubted, as he 
has himself owned, whether he had not been born 
an " age too late." For this notion Johnson has 
thought fit to make him the butt of much clumsy 
ridicule. The poet, we believe, understood the 15 
nature of his art better than the critic. He knew 
that his poetical genius derived no advantage 
from the civilization which surrounded him, or 
from the learning which he had acquired ; and he 
looked back with something like regret to the 20 
ruder age of simple words and vivid impressions. 

10. We think that, as civilization advances, 
poetry almost necessarily declines. Therefore, 
though we fervently admire those great works of 



8 MAC A ULA Y'S ESSAYS. 

imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we 
do not admire them the more because they have ap- 
peared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold that 
the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is 

5 a great poem produced in a civilized age. We can- 
not understand why those who believe in that 
most orthodox article of literary faith, that the 
earliest poets are generally the best, should won- 
der at the rule as if it were the exception, 

10 Surely the uniformity of the phenomenon in- 
dicates a corresponding uniformity in the cause. 

11. The fact is, that common observers reason 
from the progress of the experimental sciences to 
that of the imitative arts. The improvement of 

15 the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent 
in collecting materials, ages more in separating 
and combining them. Even when a system has 
been formed, there is still something to add, to 
alter, or to reject. Every generation enjoys the 

20 use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, 
and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh 
acquisitions, to future ages. In these pursuits, 
therefore, the first speculators lie under great dis- 
advantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled 



MILTON. 9 

to praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellec- 
tual powers, speedily surpass them in actual 
attainments. Every girl who has read Mrs. Mar- 
cet's little dialogues on Political Economy could 
teach Montague or Walpole many lessons in 5 
finance. Any intelligent man may now, by reso- 
lutely applying himself for a few years to mathe- 
matics, learn more than the great Newton knew 
after half a century of study and meditation. 

12. But it is not thus with music, with paint- 10 
ing, or with sculpture. Still less is it thus with 
poetry. The progress of refinement rarely sup- 
plies these arts with better objects of imitation. 
It may indeed improve the instruments which are 
necessary to the mechanical operations of the 15 
musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But 
language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted 
for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, 
like individuals, first perceive and then abstract. 
They advance from particular images to general 20 
terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened 
society is philosophical, that of a half-civilized 
people is poetical. 

13. This change in the language of men is 



10 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

partly the cause and partly the effect of a corre- 
sponding change in the nature of their intellectual 
operations, of a change by which science gains and 
poetry loses. Generalization is necessary to the 

5 advancement of knowledge ; but particularity is 
indispensable to the creations of the imagination. 
In proportion as men know more and think more, 
they look less at individuals and more at classes. 
They therefore make better theories and worse 

10 poems. They give us vague phrases instead of 
images, and personified qualities instead of men. 
They may be better able to analyze human nature 
than their predecessors. But analysis is not the 
business of the poet. His office is to portray, not 

15 to dissect. He may believe in a moral sense, like 
Shaftesbury ; he may refer all human actions to 
self-interest, like Helvetius ; or he may never 
think about the matter at all. His creed on such 
subjects will no more influence his poetry, properly 

20 so called, than the notions which a painter may 
have conceived respecting the lachrymal glands, 
or the circulation of the blood, will affect the tears 
of his Niobe, or the blushes of his Aurora. If 
Shakespeare had written a book on the motives of 



MILTON. 11 

human actions, it is by no means certain that it 
would have been a good one. It is extremely 
improbable that it would have contained half so 
much able reasoning on the subject as is to be 
found in the Fable of the Bees. But could 5 
Manderville have created an Iago? Well as he 
knew how to resolve characters into their elements, 
would he have been able to combine those elements 
in such a manner as to make up a man, a real, 
living, individual man? 10 

14. Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can 
even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness 
of mind, if anything which gives so much pleasure 
ought to be called unsoundness. By poetry we 
mean not all writing in verse, nor even all good 15 
writing in verse. Our definition excludes many 
metrical compositions which, on other grounds, 
deserve the highest praise. By poetry we mean 
the art of employing words in such a manner as 
to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art 20 
of doing by means of words what the painter does 
by means of colors. Thus the greatest of poets 
has described it, in lines universally admired for 
the vigor and felicity of their diction, and still 



12 MA CAUL AY \S ESSAYS. 

more valuable on account of the just notion which 
they convey of the art in which he excelled : — - 

" As imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
5 Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 

A local habitation and a name." 

These are the fruits of the " fine frenzy " which 
he ascribes to the poet, — a fine frenzy, doubtless, 
but still a frenzy. Truth, indeed, is essential to 

10 poetry ; but it is the truth of madness. The 
reasonings are just ; but the premises are false. 
After the first suppositions have been made, every- 
thing ought to be consistent; but those first sup- 
positions require a degree of credulity which almost 

15 amounts to a partial and temporary derangement 
of the intellect. Hence of all people children are 
the most imaginative. They abandon themselves 
without reserve to every illusion. Every image 
which is strongly presented to their mental eye 

20 produces on them the effect of reality. No man, 
whatever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by 
Hamlet or Lear, as a little girl is affected by the 
story of poor Red Riding-hood. She knows that it 
is all false, that wolves cannot speak, that there are 



MILTON. 13 

no wolves in England. Yet in spite of her knowl- 
edge she believes; she weeps; she trembles; she 
dares not go into a dark room lest she should feel 
the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is 
the despotism of the imagination over unculti- 5 
vated minds. 

15. In a rude state of society men are children 
with a greater variety of ideas. It is therefore in 
such a state of society that Ave may expect to find 
the poetical temperament in its highest perfection. io 
In an enlightened age there will be much intelli- 
gence, much science, much philosophy, abundance 
of just classification and subtle analysis, abun- 
dance of wit and eloquence, abundance of verses, 
and even of good ones; but little poetry. Men 15 
will judge and compare : but they will not create. 
They will talk about the old poets, and comment 
on them, and to a certain degree enjoy them. But 
they will scarcely lie able to conceive the effect 
which poetry produced on their ruder ancestors, 20 
the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief. 
The Greek Rhapsodists, according to Plato, could 
scarce recite Homer without falling into convul- 
sions. The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping- 



14 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

knife while he shouts his death-song. The power 
which the ancient bards of Wales and Germany 
exercised over their auditors seems to modern 
readers almost miraculous. Such feelings are very 
5 rare in a civilized community, and most rare 
among those who participate most in its improve- 
ments. They linger longest among the peasantry. 

16. Poetry producer an illusion on the eye of 
the mind, as a magic lantern produces an illusion 

10 on the eye of the body. And, as the magic lan- 
tern acts best in a dark room, poetry effects its 
purpose most completely in a dark age. As the 
light of knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions, 
as the outlines of certainty become more and more 

15 definite, and the shades of probability more and 
more distinct, the hues and lineaments of the phan- 
toms which the poet calls up grow fainter and 
fainter. We cannot unite the incompatible ad- 
vantages of reality and deception, the clear dis- 

20 cernment of truth and the exquisite enjoyment of 
fiction. 

17. He who, in an enlightened and literary 
society, aspires to be a great poet, must first be- 
come a little child. He must take to pieces the 



MILTON. 15 

whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much 
of that knowledge which has perhaps constituted 
hitherto his chief title to superiority. His very 
talents will be a hindrance to him. His difficul- 
ties will be proportioned to his proficiency in the 5 
pursuits which are fashionable among his contem- 
poraries; and that proficiency will in general be 
proportioned to the vigor and activity of his mind. 
And it is well if, after all his sacrifices and exer- 
tions, his works do not resemble a lisping man or 10 
a modern ruin. We have seen in our own time 
great talents, intense labor, and long meditation, 
employed in this struggle against the spirit of the 
age, and employed, we will not say absolutely in 
vain, but with dubious success and feeble applause. 15 

18. If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever 
triumphed over greater difficulties than Milton. 
He received a learned education: he was a pro- 
found and elegant classical scholar : he had studied 
all the mysteries of Rabbinical literature: he was ^0 
intimately acquainted with every language of mod- 
ern Europe, from which either pleasure or infor- 
mation was then to be derived. He was perhaps 
the only great poet of later times who has been 



1 6 MA CA ULA Y ' S ESS, 1 ) 'S . 

distinguished by the excellence of his Latin verse. 
The genius of Petrarch was scarcely of the iirst 
order; and his poems in the ancient language, 
though much praised by those who have never read 

5 them, are wretched compositions. Cowley, with 
all his admirable wit and ingenuity, had little 
imagination; nor indeed do we think his classical 
diction comparable to that of Milton. The au- 
thority of Johnson is against us on this point. 

10 But Johnson had studied the bad writers of the 
middle ages till he had become utterly insensible 
to the Augustan elegance, and was as ill qualified 
to judge between two Latin styles as a habitual 
drunkard to set up for a wine- taster. 

15 19. Versification in a dead language is an 
exotic, a far-fetched, costly, sickly imitation of 
that which elsewhere may be found in healthful 
and spontaneous perfection. The soils on which 
this rarity flourishes are in general as ill-suited to 

20 the production of vigorous native poetry as the 
flower-pots of a hot-house to the growth of oaks. 
That the author of the Paradise Lost should have 
written the Epistle to Manso was truly wonderful. 
Never before were such marked originality and 



MILTON. 17 

such exquisite mimicry found together. Indeed, 
in all the Latin poems of Milton the artificial 
manner indispensable to such works is admirably 
preserved, while, at the same time, his genius gives 
to them a peculiar charm, an air of nobleness and 5 
freedom, which distinguishes them from all other 
writings of the same class. They remind us of 
amusements of those angelic warriors who com- 
posed the cohort of Gabriel : — 

" About him exercised heroic games 10 

The unarmed youth of heaven. But o'er their heads 
Celestial armory, shield, helm, and spear, 
Hung high, with diamond flaming and with gold." 

We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for 
which the genius of Milton ungirds itself, without 15 
catching a glimpse of the gorgeous and terrible 
panoply which it is accustomed to wear. The 
strength of his imagination triumphed over every 
obstacle. So intense and ardent was the fire of 
his mind, that it not only was not suffocated be- 20 
neath the weight of fuel, but penetrated the whole 
superincumbent mass with its own heat and radi- 
ance. 

20. It is not our intention to attempt anything 



18 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

like a complete examination of the poetry of 
Milton. The public has long been agreed as to 
the merit of the most remarkable passages, the in- 
comparable harmony of the numbers, and the ex- 

5 cellence of that style which no rival has been able 
to equal and no parodist to degrade, which displays 
in their highest perfection the idiomatic powers of 
the English tongue, and to which every ancient 
and every modern language lias contributed some- 

10 thing of grace, of energy, or of music. In the vast 
field of criticism on which we are entering, innu- 
merable reapers have already put their sickles. 
Yet the harvest is so abundant that the negligent 

. search of a straggling gleaner may be rewarded 

15 with a sheaf. 

21. The most striking characteristic of the 
poetry of Milton is the extreme remoteness of 
the associations by means of which it acts on the 
reader. Its effect is produced, not so much by 

20 what it expresses, as by what it suggests ; not so 
much by the ideas which it directly conveys, as by 
other ideas which are connected with them. He 
electrifies the mind through conductors. The most 
unimaginative man must understand the Iliad. 



MILTON. 19 

Homer gives him no choice, and requires from him 
no exertion, but takes the whole upon himself, and 
sets the images in so clear a light that it is impos- 
sible to be blind to them. The works of Milton 
cannot be comprehended or enjoyed unless the 5 
mind of the reader co-operate with that of the 
writer. He does not paint a finished picture, or 
play for a mere passive listener. He sketches, and 
leaves others to fill up the outline. He strikes the 
key-note, and expects his hearer to make out the 10 
melody. 

22. We often hear of the magical influence of 
poetry. The expression in general means noth- 
ing ; but, applied to the writings of Milton, it is 
most appropriate. His poetry acts like an incan- 15 
tation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning 
than in its occult power. There would seem, at 
first sight, to be no more in his words than in 
other words. But they are words of enchantment. 
No sooner are they pronounced, than the past is 20 
present and the distant near. New forms of beauty 
start at once into existence, and all the burial- 
places of the memory give up their dead. Change 
the structure of the sentence, substitute one syn- 



20 MAC AULA Y'S ESSAYS. 

onym for another, and the whole effect is de- 
stroyed. The spell loses its power; and he who 
should then hope to conjure with it would find 
himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the Ara- 

5 bian tale, when he stood crying, " Open Wheat," 
" Open Barley," to the door which obeyed no 
sound but "Open Sesame." The miserable failure 
of Dry den in his attempt to translate into his own 
diction some parts of the Paradise Lost, is a re- 

10 markable instance of this. 

23. In support of these observations we may 
remark, that scarcely any passages in the poems of 
Milton are more generally known, or more fre- 
quently repeated, than those which are little more 

15 than muster-rolls of names. They are not always 
more appropriate or more melodious than other 
names. But they are charmed names. Every one 
of them is the first link in a long chain of asso- 
ciated ideas. Like the dwelling-place of our in- 

20 fancy revisited in manhood, like the song of our 
country heard in a strange land, they produce upon 
us an effect wholly independent of their intrinsic 
value. One transports us back to a remote period 
of history. Another places us among the novel 



MILT OX. 21 

scenes and manners of a distant region. A third 
evokes all the dear classical recollections of child- 
hood, the school-room, the dog-eared Virgil, the 
holiday, and the prize. A fourth brings before us 
the splendid phantoms of chivalrous romance, the 5 
trophied lists, the embroidered housings, the quaint 
devices, the haunted forests, the enchanted gar- 
dens, the achievements of enamoured knights, and 
the smiles of rescued princesses. 

24. In none of the works of Milton is his 10 
peculiar manner more happily displayed than in 
the Allegro and the Penseroso. It is impossible 
to conceive that the mechanism of language can be 
brought to a more exquisite degree of perfection. 
These poems differ from others as atar of roses 15 
differs from ordinary rose-water, the close-packed 
essence from the thin, diluted mixture. They are 
indeed not so much poems as collections of hints, 
from each of which the reader is to make out a 
poem for himself. Every epithet is a text for 20 
a stanza. 

25. The Comus and the Samson Agonistes are 
works which, though of very different merit, offer 
some marked points of resemblance. Both are 



22 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

lyric poems in the form of plays. There are per- 
haps no two kinds of composition so essentially 
dissimilar as the drama and the ode. The busi- 
ness of the dramatist is to keep himself out of 

5 sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. 
As soon as he attracts notice to his personal feel- 
ings, the illusion is broken. The effect is as un- 
pleasant as that which is produced on the stage by 
the voice of a prompter or the entrance of a scene- 

10 shifter. Hence it was that the tragedies of Byron 
were his least successful performances. They re- 
semble those pasteboard pictures invented by the 
friend of children, Mr. Newbery, in which a single 
movable head goes round twenty different bodies, 

15 so that the same face looks out upon us, suc- 
cessively, from the uniform of a hussar, the furs 
of a jndge, and the rags of a beggar. In all the 
characters, patriots and tyrants, haters and lovers, 
the frown and sneer of Harold were discernible in 

20 an instant. But this species of egotism, though 
fatal to the drama, is the inspiration of the ode. 
It is the part of the lyric poet to abandon himself, 
without reserve, to his own emotions. 

26. Between these hostile elements many great 



MILTON. 23 

men have endeavored to effect an amalgamation, 
but never with complete success. The Greek 
Drama, on the model of which the Samson was 
written, sprang from the Ode. The dialogue was 
ingrafted on the chorus, and naturally partook of 5 
its character. The genius of the greatest of the 
Athenian dramatists cooperated with the circum- 
stances under which tragedy made its first appear- 
ance. iEschylus was, head and heart, a lyric poet. 
In his time the Greeks had far more intercourse 10 
with the East than in the days of Homer; and 
they had not yet acquired that immense superiority 
in war, in science, and in the arts, which, in the 
following generation, led them to treat the Asiatics 
with contempt. From the narrative of Herodotus 15 
it should seem that they still looked up, with the 
veneration of disciples, to Egypt and Assyria. At 
this period, accordingly, it was natural that the 
literature of Greece should be tinctured with the 
Oriental style. And that style, we think, is dis- 20 
cernible in the works of Pindar and ^Eschylus. 
The latter often reminds us of the Hebrew writers. 
The book of Job, indeed, in conduct and diction, 
bears a considerable resemblance to some of his 



24 MACAU LAY'S ESSAYS. 

dramas. Considered as plays, his works are 
absurd; considered as choruses, they are above all 
praise. If, for instance, we examine the address 
of Olytemnestra to Agamemnon on his return, or 

5 the description of the seven Argive chiefs, by the 
principles of dramatic writing, we shall instantly 
condemn them as monstrous. But if we forget the 
characters, and think only of the poetry, we shall 
admit that it has never been surpassed in energy 

10 and magnificence. Sophocles made the Greek 
drama as dramatic as was consistent with its 
original form. His portraits of men have a sort of 
similarity ; but it is the similarity not of a paint- 
ing, but of a bas-relief. It suggests a resem- 

15 blance ; but it does not produce an illusion. 
Euripides attempted to carry the reform further. 
But it was a task far beyond his powers, perhaps 
beyond any powers. Instead of correcting what 
was bad, he destroyed what was excellent. He 

20 substituted crutches for stilts, bad sermons for 
good odes. 

27. Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides 
highly; much more highly than, in our opinion, 
Euripides deserved. Indeed, the caresses which 



MILTON. 25 

this partiality leads our countryman to bestow on 
" sad Electra's poet," sometimes remind us of the 
beautiful Queen of Fairyland kissing the long ears 
of Bottom. At all events, there can be no doubt 
that this veneration for the Athenian, whether 5 
just or not, was injurious to the Samson Agonistes. 
Mad Milton taken ^Eschylus for his model, he 
would have given himself up to the lyric inspira- 
tion, and poured out profusely all the treasures of 
his mind, without bestowing a thought on those 10 
dramatic proprieties which the nature of the work 
rendered it impossible to preserve. In the attempt 
to reconcile things in their own nature inconsis- 
tent, he has failed, as every one else must have 
failed. We cannot identify ourselves with the 15 
characters, as in a good play. We cannot identify 
ourselves with the poet, as in a good ode. The 
conflicting ingredients, like an acid and an alkali 
mixed,. neutralize each other. We are by no means 
insensible to the merits of this celebrated piece, to 20 
the severe dignity of the style, the graceful and 
pathetic solemnity of the opening speech, or the 
wild and barbaric melody which gives so striking 
an effect to the choral passages. But we think it, 



26 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

we confess, the least successful effort of the genius 
of Milton. 

28. The Com us is framed on the model of the 
Italian Masque, as the Samson is framed on 

5 the model of the Greek Tragedy. It is certainly 
the noblest performance of the kind which exists in 
any language. It is as far superior to the Faith- 
ful Shepherdess, as the Faithful Shepherdess is 
to the Aminta or the Aminta to the Pastor Fido. 

10 It was well for Milton that he had here no 
Euripides to mislead him. lie understood and 
loved the literature of modern Italy. But lie did 
not feel for it the same veneration which he enter- 
tained for the remains of Athenian and Roman 

15 poetry, consecrated by so many lofty and endear- 
ing recollections. The faults, moreover, of his 
Italian predecessors were of a kind to which his 
mind had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to 
a plain style, sometimes even to a bald style ; but 

20 false brilliancy was his utter aversion. His Muse 
had no objection to a russet attire ; but she turned 
with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry 
and as paltry as the rags of a chimney-sweeper on 
May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears are of 



MIL TON. 27 

massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but 
capable of standing the severest test of the crucible. 
29. Milton attended in the Comus to the dis- 
tinction which he afterwards neglected in the 
Samson. He made his Masque what it ought to 5 
be, essentially lyrical, and dramatic only in sem- 
blance. He has not attempted a fruitless struggle 
against a defect inherent in the nature of that 
species of composition ; and he has therefore suc- 
ceeded, wherever success was not impossible. 10 
The speeches must be read as majestic solilo- 
quies ; and he who so reads them will be en- 
raptured with their eloquence, their sublimity, 
and their music. The interruptions of the dia- 
logue, however, impose a constraint upon the 15 
writer, and break the illusion of the reader. The 
finest passages are those which are lyric in form 
as well as in spirit. " I should much commend," 
says the excellent Sir Henry Wotton in a letter 
to Milton, " the tragical part, if the lyrical did 20 
not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy 
in your songs and odes, whereunto, I must plainly 
confess to you, 1 have seen yet nothing parallel 
in our language." The criticism was just. It is 



2 8 MA CA ULA Y ' S ESS A YS. 

when Milton escapes from the shackles of the 
dialogue, when he is discharged from the labor 
of uniting two incongruous styles, when he is at 
liberty to indulge his choral raptures without 
5 reserve, that he rises even above himself. Then, 
like his own good Genius bursting from the 
earthly form and weeds of Thyrsis, he stands 
forth in celestial freedom and beauty ; he seems 
to cry exultingly, 

10 "Now my task is smoothly done, 

I can fly, or I can run," 

to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to 
bathe in the Elysian dew of the rainbow, and to 
inhale the balmy smells of nard and cassia, which 

15 the musky wings of the zephyr scatter through 
the cedared alleys of the Hesperides. 

30. There are several of the minor poems of 
Milton on which we would willingly make a few 
remarks. Still more willingly would we enter 

20 into a detailed examination of that admirable 
poem, the Paradise Regained, which, strangely 
enough, is scarcely ever mentioned except as an 
instance of the blindness of the parental affection 



MILTON. 29 

which men of letters bear towards the offspring 
of their intellects. That Milton was mistaken in 
preferring this work, excellent as it is, to the 
Paradise Lost, we readily admit. But we are 
sure that the superiority of the Paradise Lost to 5 
the Paradise Regained is not more decided than 
the superiority of the Paradise Regained to every 
poem which lias since made its appearance. Our 
limits, however, prevent us from discussing the 
point at length. We hasten on to that extraor- 10 
dinary production which the general suffrage of 
critics has placed in the highest class of human 
compositions. 

31. The only poem of modern times which can 
be compared with the Paradise Lost is the Divine 15 
Comedy. The subject of Milton, in some points, 
resembled that of Dante ; but he has treated it in 

a widely different manner. We cannot, we think, 
better illustrate our opinion respecting our own 
great poet, than by contrasting him with the 20 
father of Tuscan literature. 

32. The poetry of Milton differs from that of 
Dante as the hieroglyphics of Egypt differed from 
the picture-writing of Mexico, The images which 



30 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

Dante employs speak for themselves ; they stand 
simply for what they are. Those of Milton have 
a signification which is often discernible only to 
the initiated. Their value depends less on what 

5 they directly represent than on what they remotely 
suggest. However strange, however grotesque, 
may be the appearance which Dante undertakes to 
describe, he never shrinks from describing it. He 
gives us the shape, the color, the sound, the smell, 

10 the taste ; he counts the numbers ; he measures 
the size. His similes are the illustrations of a 
traveller. Unlike those of other poets, and espe- 
cially of Milton, they are introduced in a plain, 
business-like manner; not for the sake of any 

15 beauty in the objects from which they are drawn ; 
not for the sake of any ornament which they may 
impart to the poem ; but simply in order to make 
the meaning of the writer as clear to the reader as 
it is to himself. The ruins of the precipice which 

20 led from the sixth to the seventh circle of hell 
were like those of the rock which fell into the 
Adige on the south of Trent. The cataract of 
Phlegethon was like that of Aqua Cheta at the 
monastery of St. Benedict. The place where the 



MILTON. 31 

heretics were confined in burning tombs resembled 
the vast cemetery of Aries. 

33. Now let us compare with the exact details 
of Dante the dim intimations of Milton. We will 
cite a few examples. The English poet has never 5 
thought of taking the measure of Satan. ' He gives 
us merely a vague idea of vast bulk. In one pas- 
sage the fiend lies stretched out, huge in length, 
floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth- 
born enemies of Jove, or to the sea-monster which 10 
the mariner mistakes for an island. When he 
addresses himself to battle against the guardian 
angels, he stands like Teneriffe or Atlas : his 
stature reaches the sky. Contrast with these de- 
scriptions the lines in which Dante has described 15 
the gigantic spectre of Nimrod. " His face seemed 
to me as long and as broad as the ball of St. 
Peter's at Rome ; and his other limbs were in pro- 
portion; so that the bank, which concealed him 
from the waist downwards, nevertheless showed so 20 
much of him, that three tall Germans would in 
vain have attempted to reach his hair." We are 
sensible that Ave do no justice to the admirable 
style of the Florentine poet. But Mr. Cary's 



32 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

translation is not at hand ; and our version, how- 
ever rude, is sufficient to illustrate our meaning. 

34. Once more, compare the lazar-house in the 
eleventh book of the Paradise Lost with the last 

5 ward of Malebolge in Dante. Milton avoids the 
loathsome details, and takes refuge in indistinct 
but solemn and tremendous imagery: Despair 
hurrying from couch to couch to mock the 
wretches with his attendance ; Death shaking his 

10 dart over them, but, in spite of supplications, 
delaying to strike. What says Dante ? " There 
was such a moan there as there would be if all the 
sick who, between July and September, are- in the 
hospitals of Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan 

15 swamps, and of Sardinia, were in one pit together; 
and such a stench was issuing forth as is wont to 
issue from decayed limbs." 

35. We will not take upon ourselves the in- 
vidious office of settling precedency between two 

20 such writers. Each in his own department is in- 
comparable ; and each, we may remark, lias wisely, 
or fortunately, taken a subject adapted to exhibit 
his peculiar talent to the greatest advantage. The 
Divine Comedy is a personal narrative. Dante is 



MILTON. 88 

the eye-witness and ear-witness of that which he 
relates. He is the very man who has heard the 
tormented spirits crying out for the second death ; 
who has read the dusky characters on the portal 
within which there is no hope ; who has hidden 5 
his face from the terrors of the Gorgon ; who has 
fled from the hooks and the seething pitch f 
Barbariccia and Draohio-nazzo. His own hands 
have grasped the shaggy sides of Lucifer. His 
own feet have climbed the mountain of expiation. 10 
His own brow has been marked by the purifying 
angel. The reader would throw aside such a tale 
in incredulous disgust, unless it were told with the 
strongest air of veracity, with a sobriety even in 
its horrors, with the greatest precision and multi- 15 
plicity in its details. The narrative of Milton in 
this respect differs from that of Dante, as the ad- 
ventures of Amadis differ from those of Gulliver. 
The author of Amadis would have made his book 
ridiculous if he had introduced those minute par- 20 
ticulars which give such a charm to the work of 
Swift: the nautical observations, the affected deli- 
cacy about names, the official documents tran- 
scribed at full length, and all the unmeaning gossip 



34 MACAU LAY'S ESSAYS. 

and scandal of the court, springing out of nothing, 
and tending to nothing. We are not shocked at 
being told that a man who lived, nobody knows 
when, saw many very strange sights, and we can 

5 easily abandon ourselves to the illusion of the 
romance. But when Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, 
resident at Rotherhithe, tells us of pygmies and 
giants, flying islands, and philosophizing horses, 
nothing but such circumstantial touches could 

10 produce for a single moment a deception on the 
imagination. 

36. Of all the poets who have introduced into 
their works the agency of supernatural beings, 
Milton has succeeded best. Here Dante decidedly 

15 yields to him ; and as this is a point on which 
many rash and ill-considered judgments have been 
pronounced, we feel inclined to dwell on it a little 
longer. The most fatal error which a poet can 
possibly commit in the management of his machin- 

20 ery, is that of attempting to philosophize too 
much. Milton lias been often censured for ascrib- 
ing to spirits many functions of Avhich spirits 
must be incapable. But these objections, though 
sanctioned by eminent names, originate, we ven- 



MILTON. 35 

ture to say, in profound ignorance of the art of 
poetry. 

37. What is spirit? What are our own minds, 
the portion of spirit with which we are best ac- 
quainted ? We observe certain phenomena. We 5 
cannot explain them into material causes. We 
therefore infer that there exists something which 
is not material. But of this something we have 
no idea. We can define it only by negatives. We 
can reason about it only by symbols. We use the io 
word ; but we have no image of the thing ; and the 
business of poetry is with images, and not with 
words. The poet uses words indeed ; but they are 
merely the instruments of his art, not its objects. 
They are the materials which he is to dispose in 15 
such a manner as to present a picture to the mental 
eye. And if they are not so disposed, they are no 
more entitled to be called poetry than a bale of 
canvas and a box of colors to be called a painting. 

38. Logicians may reason about abstractions. 20 
But the great mass of men must have images. The 
strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and 
nations to idolatry can be explained on no other 
principle. The first inhabitants of Greece, there 



36 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

is reason to believe, worshipped one invisible 
Deity. But the necessity of having something 
more definite to adore produced, in a few centu- 
ries, the innumerable crowd of gods and god- 

5 desses. In like manner the ancient Persians 
thought it impious to exhibit the Creator under a 
human form. Yet even these transferred to the 
Sun the worship which, in speculation, they con- 
sidered due only to the Supreme Mind. The his- 

10 tory of the Jews is the record of a continued 
straggle between pure Theism, supported by the 
most terrible sanctions, and the strangely fascinat- 
ing desire of having some visible and tangible 
object of adoration. Perhaps none of the second- 

15 ary causes which Gibbon has assigned for the 
rapidity with which Christianity spread over the 
world, while Judaism scarcely ever acquired a 
proselyte, operated more powerfully than this feel- 
ing. God, the uncreated, the incomprehensible, 

20 the invisible, attracted few worshippers. A philos- 
opher might admire so noble a conception ; but 
the crowd, turned away in disgust from words 
which presented no image to their minds. It was 
before Deity, embodied in a human form, walking 



MILTON. 37 

among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning 
on their bosoms, Aveeping over their graves, slum- 
bering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, that 
the prejudices of the Synagogue, and the doubts 
of the Academy, and the pride of the Portico, and 5 
the fasces of the Lictor, and the swords of thirty 
legions, Avere humbled in the dust. Soon after 
Christianity had achieved its triumph, the prin- 
ciple which had assisted it began to corrupt it. It 
became a new Paganism. Patron saints assumed 10 
the offices of household gods. St. George took 
the place of Mars. St. Elmo consoled the 
mariner for the loss of Castor and Pollux. 
The Virgin Mother and Cecilia succeeded to 
Venus and the Muses. The fascination of sex 15 
and loveliness was again joined to that of celestial 
dignity ; and the homage of chivalry was blended 
with that of religion. Reformers have often made 
a stand against these feelings ; but never with 
more than apparent and partial success. The men 20 
who demolished the images in cathedrals have not 
always been able to demolish those which were 
enshrined in their minds. It would not be diffi- 
cult to show that in politics the same rule holds 



38 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

good. Doctrines, we are afraid, must generally 
be embodied before they can excite a strong public 
feeling. The multitude is more easily interested 
for the most unmeaning badge, or the most in- 

5 significant name, than for the most important 
principle. 

39. From these considerations, we infer that no 
poet who should affect that metaphysical accuracy 
for the want of which Milton has been blamed, 

10 would escape a disgraceful failure. Still, however, 
there was another extreme which, though far less 
dangerous, was also to be avoided. The imagina- 
tions of men are in a great measure under the 
control of their opinions. The most exquisite art 

15 of poetical coloring can produce no illusion when 
it is employed to represent that which is at once 
perceived to be incongruous and absurd. Milton 
wrote in an age of philosophers and theologians. 
It was necessary, therefore, for him to abstain from 

20 giving such a shock to their understandings as 
might break the charm which it was his object to 
throw over their imaginations. This is ■ the real 
explanation of the indistinctness and inconsistency 
with which he has often been reproached. Dr. 



MILTON. 39 

Johnson acknowledges that it was absolutely neces- 
sary that the spirits should be clothed with material 
forms. " But," says he, " the poet should have 
secured the consistency of his system by keeping 
immateriality out of sight, and seducing the reader 5 
to drop it from his thoughts." This is easily 
said ; but what if Milton could not seduce his 
readers to drop immateriality from their thoughts ? 
What if the contrary opinion had taken so full a 
possession of the minds of men as to leave no 10 
room even for the half-belief which poetry re- 
quires? Such we suspect to have been the case. 
It was impossible for the poet to adopt altogether 
the material or the immaterial system. He there- 
fore took his stand on the debatable ground. He 15 
left the whole in ambiguity. He has doubtless, 
by so doing, laid himself open to the charge of 
inconsistency. But, though philosophically in the 
wrong, we cannot but believe that he was poetic- 
ally in the right. This task, which almost any 20 
other writer would have found impracticable, was 
easy to him. The peculiar art which he possessed 
of communicating his meaning circuitously through 
a long succession of associated ideas, and of inti- 



40 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

mating more than he expressed, enabled him to 
disguise those incongruities which he could not 
avoid. 

40. Poetry which relates to the beings of another 

5 world ought to be at once mysterious and pictur- 
esque. That of Milton is so. That of Dante is 
picturesque indeed beyond any that ever was 
written. Its effect approaches to that produced 
by the pencil or the chisel. But it is picturesque 

10 to the exclusion of all mystery. This is a fault on 
the right side, a fault inseparable from the plan of 
Dante's poem, which, as we have already observed, 
rendered the utmost accuracy of description neces- 
sary. Still it is a fault. The supernatural agents 

15 excite an interest ; but it is not the interest which 
is proper to supernatural agents. We feel that 
we could talk to the ghosts and demons, without 
any emotion of unearthly awe. We could, like 
Don Juan, ask them to supper, and eat heartily in 

20 their company. Dante's angels are good men with 
wings. His devils are spiteful, ugly executioners. 
His dead men are merely living men in strange 
situations. The scene which passes between the 
poet and Farinata is justly celebrated. Still, Fari- 



MILTON. 41 

nata in the burning tomb is exactly what Farinata 
would have been at an auto dafe. Nothing can 
be more touching than the first interview of Dante 
and Beatrice. Yet what is it, but a lovely woman 
chiding, with sweet austere composure, the lover 5 
for whose affection she is grateful, but whose vices 
she reprobates ? The feelings which give the pas- 
sage its charm would suit the streets of Florence 
as well as the summit of the Mount of Purgatory. 

41. The spirits of Milton are unlike those of 10 
almost all other writers. His fiends, in particular, 
are wonderful creations. They are not meta- 
physical abstractions. They are not wicked men. 
They are not ugly beasts. They have no horns, 
no tails, none of the fee-faw-fum of Tasso and 15 
Klopstock. They have just enough in common 
with human nature to be intelligible to human 
beings. Their characters are, like their forms, 
marked by a certain dim resemblance to those of 
men, but exaggerated to gigantic dimensions, and 20 
veiled in mysterious gloom. 

42. Perhaps the gods and demons of JEschylus 
may best bear a comparison with the angels and 
devils of Milton. The style of the Athenian had, 



42 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

as we have remarked, something of the Oriental 
character ; and the same peculiarity may be traced 
in his mythology. It has nothing of the amenity 
and elegance which we generally find in the super- 

5 stitions of Greece. All is rugged, barbaric, and 
colossal. The legends of J^schylus seem to har- 
monize less with the fragrant groves and graceful 
porticoes in which his countrymen paid their vows 
to the God of Light and Goddess of Desire, than 

10 with those huge and grotesque labyrinths of eternal 
granite in which Egypt enshrined her mystic 
Osiris, or in which Hindostan still bows down to 
her seven-headed idols. His favorite gods are 
those of the elder generation, the sons of heaven 

15 and earth, compared with whom Jupiter himself 
was a stripling and an upstart, the gigantic Titans, 
and the inexorable Furies. Foremost among his 
creations of this class stands Prometheus, half 
fiend, half redeemer, the friend of man, the sullen 

20 and implacable enemy of heaven. Prometheus 
bears undoubtedly a considerable resemblance to 
the Satan of Milton. In both we find the same 
impatience of control, the same ferocity, the same 
unconquerable pride. In both characters also are 



MILTON. 43 

mingled, though in very different proportions, 
some kind and generous feelings. Prometheus, 
however, is hardly superhuman enough. He talks 
too much of his chains and his uneasy posture ; he 
is rather too much depressed and agitated. His 5 
resolution seems to depend on the knowledge which 
he possesses that he holds the fate of his torturer 
in his hands, and that the hour of his release will 
surely come. But Satan is a creature of another 
sphere. The might of his intellectual nature is 10 
victorious over the extremity of pain. Amidst 
agonies which cannot be conceived without horror, 
he deliberates, resolves, and even exults. Against 
the sword of Michael, against the thunder of 
Jehovah, against the flaming lake, and the marl 15 
burning with solid fire, against the prospect of an 
eternity of unintermitted misery, his spirit bears 
up unbroken, resting on its own innate energies, 
requiring no support from anything external, nor 
even from hope itself. 20 

43. To return for a moment to the parallel 
which we have been attempting to draw between 
Milton and Dante, we would add that the poetry 
of these great men has in a considerable degree 



44 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

taken its character from their moral qualities. 
They are not egotists. They rarely obtrude their 
idiosyncrasies on their readers. They have noth- 
ing in common with those modern beggars for 

5 fame who extort a pittance from the compassion 
of the inexperienced by exposing the nakedness 
and sores of their minds. Yet it would be diffi- 
cult to name two writers whose works have been 
more completely, though undesignedly, colored by 

10 their personal feelings. 

44. The character of Milton was peculiarly dis- 
tinguished by loftiness of spirit; that of Dante by 
intensity of feeling. In every line of the Divine 
Comedy we discern the asperity which is produced 

15 by pride struggling with misery. There is perhaps 
no work in the world so deeply and uniformly 
sorrowful. The melancholy of Dante was no fan- 
tastic caprice. It was not, as far as at this dis- 
tance of time can be judged, the effect of external 

20 circumstances. It was from within. Neither love 
nor glory, neither the conflicts of earth nor the 
hope of heaven, could dispel it. It turned every 
consolation and every pleasure into its own nature. 
It resembled that noxious Sardinian soil of which 



MILTON. 45 

the intense bitterness is said to have been percepti- 
ble even in its honey. His mind was, in the noble 
language of the Hebrew poet, " a land of dark- 
ness, as darkness itself, and where the light was as 
darkness." The gloom of his character discolors 5 
all the passions of men and all the face of nature, 
and tinges Avith its own livid hue the flowers of 
Paradise and the glories of the eternal throne. 
All the portraits of him are singularly character- 
istic. No person can look on the features, noble 10 
even to ruggedness, the dark furrows of the cheek, 
the haggard and woful stare of the eye, the sullen 
and contemptuous curve of the lip, and doubt 
that they belong to a man too proud and too sen- 
sitive to be happy. 15 

45. Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a 
lover ; and, like Dante, he had been unfortunate 
in ambition and in love. He had survived his 
health and his sight, the comforts of his home, and 
the prosperity of his party. Of the great men by 20 
whom he had been distinguished at his entrance 
into life, some had been taken away from the evil 
to come ; some had carried into foreign climates 
their unconquerable hatred of oppression ; some 



46 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

were pining in dungeons ; and some had poured 
forth their blood on scaffolds. Venal and licen- 
tious scribblers, with just sufficient talent to 
clothe the thoughts of a pandar in the style of a 

5 bellman, were now the favorite writers of the 
Sovereign and of the public. It was a loathsome 
herd, which could be compared to nothing so fitly 
as to the rabble of Comus, grotesque monsters, half 
bestial, half human, dropping with wine, bloated 

10 with gluttony, and reeling in obscene dances. 
Amidst these that fair Muse was placed, like the 
chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless, and 
serene, to be chattered at, and pointed at, and 
grinned at, by the whole rout of Satyrs and Gob- 

15 lins. If ever despondency and asperity could be 
excused in any man, they might have been excused 
in Milton. But the strength of his mind overcame 
every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor 
age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor politi- 

20 cal disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, 
nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and 
majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to 
have been high, but they were singularly equable. 
His temper was serious, perhaps stern ; but it was 



MILTON. 47 

a temper which no sufferings could render sullen 
or fretful. Such as it was when, on the eve of 
great events, he returned from his travels in the 
prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with 
literary distinctions, and glowing with patriotic 5 
hopes, such it continued to be when, after having 
experienced every calamity which is incident to 
our nature, old, poor, sightless, and disgraced, he 
retired to his hovel to die. 

46. Hence it was that, though he wrote the 10 
Paradise Lost at a time of life when images of 
beauty and tenderness are in general beginning t<> 
fade, even from those minds in which they have 
not been effaced by anxiety and disappointment, 
he adorned it with all that is most lovely and de- 15 
lightful in the physical and in the moral world. 
Neither Theocritus nor Ariosto had a .finer or a 
more healthful sense of the pleasantness of ex- 
ternal objects, or loved better to luxuriate amidst 
sunbeams and flowers, the songs of nightingales, 20 
the juice of summer fruits, and the coolness of 
shady fountains. His conception of love unites 
all the voluptuousness of the Oriental harem, and 
all the gallantry of the chivalric tournament, with all 



48 MACAULAY\S ESSAYS. 

the pure and quiet affection of an English fireside. 
His poetry reminds us of the miracles of Alpine 
scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairyland, 
are embosomed in its most rugged and gigantic 

5 elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom unchilled 
on the verge of the avalanche. 

47. Traces, indeed, of the peculiar character of 
Milton may be found in all his works ; but it is 
most strongly displayed in the Sonnets. Those 

10 remarkable poems have been undervalued by critics 
who have not understood their nature. They have 
no epigrammatic point. There is none of the in- 
genuity of Filicaja in the thought, none of the 
hard and brilliant enamel of Petrarch in the style. 

15 They are simple but majestic records of the feel- 
ings of the poet ; as little tricked out for the pub- 
lic eye as his diary would have been. A victory, 
an expected attack upon the city, a momentary fit 
of depression or exultation, a jest thrown out 

20 against one of his books, a dream which for a 
short time restored to him that beautiful face over 
which the grave had closed forever, led him to 
musings which, without effort, shaped themselves 
into verse. The unity of sentiment and severity 



MILTON. . 49 

of style which characterize these little pieces 
remind us of the Greek Anthology, or perhaps 
still more of the Collects of the English Liturgy. 
The noble poem on the Massacres of Piedmont is 
strictly a collect in verse. 5 

48. The Sonnets are more or .less striking, 
according as the occasions which gave birth to 
them are more or less interesting. But they are, 
almost without exception, dignified by a sobriety 
and greatness of mind to which we know not 10 
where to look for a parallel. It would, indeed, be 
scarcely safe to draw any decided inferences as to 
the character of a writer from passages directly 
egotistical. But the qualities which we have 
ascribed to Milton, though perhaps most strongly 15 
marked in those parts of his works which treat of 
his personal feelings, are distinguishable in eveiy 
page, and impart to all his writings, prose and 
poetry, English, Latin, and Italian, a strong 
family likeness. 20 

49. His public conduct was such as was to be 
expected from a man of a spirit so high and of an 
intellect so powerful. He lived at one of the 
most memorable eras in the history of mankind; 



50 J^TA CAUL AY'S ESS ATS. 

at the very crisis of the great conflict between 
Oromasdes and Arimanes, liberty and despotism, 
reason and prejudice. That great battle was 
fought for no single generation, for no single 

5 land. The destinies of the human race were 
staked on the same cast with the freedom of the 
English people. Then were first proclaimed those 
mighty principles which have since worked their 
way into the depths of the American forests, 

10 which have roused Greece from the slavery and 
degradation of two thousand years, and which, 
from one end of Europe to the other, have kindled 
an unquenchable fire in the hearts of the oppressed, 
and loosed the knees of the oppressors with an 

15 unwonted fear. 

50. Of those principles, then struggling for 
their infant existence, Milton was the most 
devoted and eloquent literary champion. We 
need not say how much we admire his public 

20 conduct. But we cannot disguise from ourselves 
that a large portion of his countrymen still think 
it unjustifiable. The civil war, indeed, has been 
more discussed, and is less understood, than any 
event in English history. The friends of liberty 



MILTON. 51 

labored under the disadvantage of which the lion 
in the fable complained so bitterly. Though they 
were the conquerors, their enemies were the 
painters. As a body, the Roundheads had done 
their utmost to decry and ruin literature ; and 5 
literature was even with them, as, in the long 
run, it always is with its enemies. The best book 
on their side of the question is the charming narra- 
tive of Mrs. Hutchinson. May's History of the 
Parliament is good; but it breaks off at the most 10 
interesting crisis of the struggle. The perform- 
ance of Ludlow is foolish and violent ; and most of 
the later writers who have espoused the same 
cause, Oldmixon, for instance, and Catherine 
Macaulay, have, to say the least, been more dis- 15 
tinguished by zeal than either by candor or by 
skill. On the other side are the most authorita- 
tive and the most popular historical works in our 
language, that of Clarendon, and that of Hume. 
The former is not only ably written and full of 20 
valuable information, but has also an air of dignity 
and sincerity which makes even the prejudices 
and errors with which it abounds respectable. 
Hume, from whose fascinating narative the great 



52 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

mass of the reading public are still contented to 
take their opinions, hated religion so much that 
he hated liberty for having been allied with re- 
ligion, and has pleaded the cause of tyranny with 

5 the dexterity of an advocate, while affecting the 
impartiality of a judge. 

51. The public conduct of Milton must be 
approved or condemned, according as the resist- 
ance of the people to Charles the First shall 

10 appear to be justifiable or criminal. We shall 
therefore make no apology for dedicating a few 
pages to the discussion of that interesting and 
most important question. We shall not argue it on 
general grounds. We shall not recur to those 

15 primary principles from which the claim of any 
government to the obedience of its subjects is to 
be deduced. We are entitled to that vantage- 
ground ; but we will relinquish it. We are, on 
this point, so confident of superiority, that we 

20 are not unwilling to imitate the ostentatious 
generosity of those ancient knights, who vowed 
to joust without helmet or shield against all 
enemies, and to give their antagonists the ad- 
vantage of sun and wind. We will take the 



MILTON. 53 

naked constitutional question. We confidently 
affirm, that every reason which can be urged in 
favor of the Revolution of 1688 may be urged 
with at least equal force in favor of what is called 
the Great Rebellion. 5 

52. In one respect only, we think, can the 
warmest admirers of Charles venture to say that 
he was a better sovereign than his son. He was 
not, in name and profession, a Papist ; we say in 
name and profession, because both Charles him- 10 
self and his creature Laud, while they abjured the 
innocent badges of Popery, retained all its worst 
vices, a complete subjection of reason to authority, 

a weak preference of form to substance, a childish 
passion for mummeries, an idolatrous veneration 15 
for the priestly character, and, above all, a merci- 
less intolerance. This, however, we waive. We 
will concede that Charles was a good Protestant; 
but we say that his Protestantism does not make 
the slightest distinction between his case and that 20 
of James. 

53. The principles of the Revolution have often 
been grossly misrepresented, and never more than 
in the course of the present year. There is 



54 MACAULAY\S ESSAYS. 

a certain class of men who, while they profess to 
hold in reverence the great names and great 
actions of former times, never look at them for 
any other purpose than in order to find in them 

5 some excuse for existing abuses. In every vener- 
able precedent they pass by what is essential, and 
take only what is accidental: they keep out of 
sight what is beneficial, and hold up to public 
imitation all that is defective. If, in any part of 

10 any great example, there be anything unsound, 
these flesh-flies detect it with an unerring instinct, 
and dart upon it with a ravenous delight. If some 
good end has been attained in spite of them, they 
feel, with their prototype, that 

15 " Their labor must be to pervert that end, 

And out of good still to find means of evil." 

54. To the blessings which England has derived 
from the Revolution these people are utterly 
insensible. The expulsion of a tyrant, the solemn 
20 recognition of popular rights, liberty, security, 
toleration, all go for nothing with them. One 
sect there was, which, from unfortunate temporary 
causes, it was thought necessary to keep under 



MILTON. 55 

close restraint. One part of the empire there was 
so unhappily circumstanced, that at that time its 
misery was necessary to our happiness, and its 
slavery to our freedom. These are the parts of 
the Revolution which the politicians of whom we 5 
speak love to contemplate, and which seem to 
them not indeed to vindicate, but in some degree 
to palliate, the good which it has produced. Talk 
to them of Naples, of Spain, or of South America. 
They stand forth zealots for the doctrine of Divine 10 
Right, which has now come back to us, like a 
thief from transportation, under the alias of 
Legitimacy. But mention the miseries of Ireland. 
Then William is a hero. Then Somers and 
Shrewsbury are great men. Then the Revolution 15 
is a glorious era. The very same persons who, 
in this country, never omit an opportunity of 
reviving every wretched Jacobite slander respect- 
ing the Whigs of that period, have no sooner 
crossed St. George's Channel, than they begin to 20 
fill their bumpers to the glorious and immortal 
memory. They may truly boast that they look not 
at men, but at measures. So that evil be done, 
they care not who does it; the arbitrary Charles or 



56 MACAU LAY'S ESSAYS. 

the liberal William, Ferdinand the Catholic or 
Frederic the Protestant. On such occasions their 
deadliest opponents may reckon upon their candid 
construction. The bold assertions of these people 

5 have of late impressed a large portion of the public 

with an opinion that James the Second was expelled 

simply because he was a Catholic, and that the 

Revolution was essentially a Protestant Revolution. 

55. But this certainly was not the case ; nor can 

10 any person who has acquired more knowledge of 
the history of those times than is to be found in 
Goldsmith's Abridgment, believe that, if James 
had held his own religious opinions without wish- 
ing to make proselytes, or if, wishing even to make 

15 proselytes, he had contented himself with exerting 
only his constitutional influence for that purpose, 
the Prince of Orange would ever have been invited 
over. Our ancestors, we suppose, knew their own 
meaning ; and, if we may believe them, their hos- 

20 tility was primarily not to popery, but to tyranny. 
They did not drive out a tyrant because he was a 
Catholic ; but they excluded Catholics from the 
crown, because they thought them likely to be 
tyrants. The ground on which they, in their 



MILTON. 57 

famous resolution, declared the throne vacant, was 
this, " that James had broken the fundamental 
laws of the kingdom." Every man, therefore, who 
approves of the Revolution of 1688 must hold that 
the breach of fundamental laws on the part of the 5 
sovereign justifies resistance. The question, then, 
is this : Had Charles the First broken the funda- 
mental laws of England ? 

56. No person can answer in the negative un- 
less he refuses credit, not merely to all the accusa- 10 
tions brought against Charles by his opponents, 
but to the narratives of the warmest Royalists, 
and to the confessions of the King himself. If 
there be any truth in any historian of any party 
who has related the events of that reign, the con- 15 
duct of Charles, from his accession to the meeting 
of the Long Parliament, had been a continued 
course of oppression and treachery. Let those 
who applaud the Revolution and condemn the 
Rebellion mention one act of James the Second to 20 
which a parallel is not to be found in the history 
of his father. Let them lay their fingers on a 
single article in the Declaration of Right, pre- 
sented by the two Houses to William and Mary, 



58 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

which Charles is not acknowleded to have violated. 
He had, according to the testimony of his own 
friends, usurped the functions of the legislature, 
raised taxes without the consent of parliament, 

5 and quartered troops on the people in the most 
illegal and vexatious manner. Not a single session 
of parliament had passed without some uncon- 
stitutional attack on the freedom of debate. The 
right of petition was grossly violated ; arbitrary 

10 judgments, exorbitant fines, and unwarranted im- 
prisonments, were grievances of daily occurrence. 
If these things do not justify resistance, the Revo- 
lution was treason ; if they do, the Great Rebellion 
was laudable. 

15 57. But, it is said, why not adopt milder meas- 
ures ? Why, after the King had consented to so 
many reforms and renounced so many oppressive 
prerogatives, did the parliament continue to rise 
in their demands at the risk of provoking a civil 

20 war ? The ship-money had been given up. The 
Star Chamber had been abolished. Provision had 
been made for the frequent convocation and secure 
deliberation of parliaments. Why not pursue an 
end confessedly good by peaceable and regular 



MILTON. 59 

means? We recur again to the analogy of the 
Revolution. Why was James driven from the 
throne ? Why was he not retained upon condi- 
tions? He too had offered to call a free parlia- 
ment, and to submit to its decision all the matters 5 
in dispute. Yet we are in the habit of praising 
our forefathers, who preferred a revolution, a dis- 
puted succession, a dynasty of strangers, twenty 
years of foreign and intestine war, a standing 
army, and a national debt, to the rule, however 10 
restricted, of a tried and proved tyrant. The 
Long Parliament acted on the same principle, and 
is entitled to the same praise. They could not 
trust the King. He had, no doubt, passed salu- 
tary laws ; but what assurance was there that he 15 
would not break them ? He had renounced oppres- 
sive prerogatives ; but where was the security that 
he would not resume them ? The nation had to 
deal with a man whom no tie could bind, a man 
win) made and broke promises with equal facility, 20 
a man whose honor had been a hundred times 
pawned, and never redeemed. 

58. Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands 
on still stronger ground than the Convention of 



60 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

1688. No action of James can be compared to 
the conduct of Charles with respect to the Petition 
of Right. The Lords and Commons present him 
with a bill in which the constitutional limits of 

5 his power are marked out. He hesitates ; he 
evades ; at last he bargains to give his assent for 
live subsidies. The bill receives his solemn assent: 
the subsidies are voted; but no sooner is the tyrant 
relieved than he returns at once to all the arbitrary 

10 measures which he had bound himself to abandon, 
and violates all the clauses of the very Act which 
he had been paid to pass. 

59. For more than ten years the people had 
seen the rights which were theirs by a double 

15 claim, by immemorial inheritance, and by recent 
purchase, infringed by the perfidious King who had 
recognized them. At length circumstances com- 
pelled Charles to summon another parliament: 
another chance was given to our fathers : were 

20 they to throw it away as they had thrown away 
the former? Were they again to be cozened by 
le Roi le veut ? Were they again to advance their 
money on pledges which had been forfeited over 
and over again? Were they to lay a second 



MILTON. 61 

Petition of Right at the foot of the throne, to 
grant another lavish aid in exchange for another 
unmeaning ceremony, and then to take their depar- 
ture, till, after ten years more of fraud and oppres- 
sion, their prince should again require a supply, 5 
and again repay it with a perjury ? They were 
compelled to choose Avhether they would trust a 
tyrant or conquer him. We think that they chose 
wisely and nobly. 

60. The advocates of Charles, like the advo- 10 
cates of other malefactors against whom over- 
whelming evidence is produced, generally decline 
all controversy about the facts, and content them- 
selves with calling testimony to character. He 
had so many private virtues ! And had James the 15 
Second no private virtues? Was Oliver Crom- 
well, his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, 
destitute of private virtues ? And what, after all, 
are the virtues ascribed to Charles? A religious 
zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, and 20 
fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few of 
the ordinary household decencies which half the 
tombstones in England claim for those who lie 
beneath them, A good father ! A good husband ! 



62 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of per- 
secution, tyranny, and falsehood ! 

61. We charge him with having broken his 
coronation oath; and we are told that he kept his 

5 marriage vow ! We accuse him of having given 
up his people to the merciless inflictions of the 
most hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates; 
and the defence is that he took his little son on 
his knee, and kissed him ! We censure him for 

10 having violated the articles of the Petition of 
Right, after having, for good and valuable con- 
sideration, promised to observe them; and we are 
informed that he was accustomed to hear prayers 
at six o'clock in the morning ! It is to such con- 

15 siderations as these, together with his Vandyke 
dress, his handsome face, and his peaked beard, 
that he owes, we verily believe, most of his popu- 
larity with the present generation. 

62. For ourselves, we own that we do not 
20 understand the commom phrase, a good man, but 

a bad king. We can as easily conceive a good 
man and an unnatural father, or a good man and 
a treacherous friend. We cannot, in estimating 
the character of an individual, leave out of our 



MILT OX. 63 

consideration his conduct in the most important 
of all human relations; and if in that relation we 
find him to have heen selfish, cruel, and deceitful, 
we shall take the liberty to call him a had man, in 
spite of all his temperance at table, and all his 5 
regularity at chapel. 

63. We cannot refrain from adding a few words 
respecting a topic on which the defenders of 
Charles are fond of dwelling. If, they say, lie 
governed his people ill, he at least governed them 10 
after the example of his predecessors. If he vio- 
lated their privileges, it was because those privi- 
leges had not been accurately defined. No act of 
oppression has ever been imputed to him which 
has not a parallel in the annals of the Tudors. 15 
This point Hume has labored, with an art which 
is as discreditable in a historical work as it would 
be admirable in a forensic address. The answer 
is short, clear, and decisive Charles had assented 
to the Petition of Right. He had renounced the 20 
oppressive powers said to have been exercised by 
his predecessors, and he had renounced them for 
money. He was not entitled to set up his anti- 
quated claims against his own recent release. 



64 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

64. These arguments are so obvious that it may 
seem superfluous to dwell upon them. But those 
who have observed how much the events of that 
time are misrepresented and misunderstood, will 

5 not blame us for stating the case simply. It is a 
case of which the simplest statement is the 
strongest. 

65. The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, 
rarely choose to take issue on the great points 

10 of the question. They content themselves with 
exposing some of the crimes and follies to which 
public commotions necessarily give birth. They 
bewail the unmerited fate of Strafford. They exe- 
crate the lawless violence of the army. They 

15 laugh at the Scriptural names of the preachers. 
Major-generals fleecing their districts ; soldiers 
revelling on the spoils of a ruined peasantry ; 
upstarts, enriched by the public plunder, taking 
possession of the hospitable firesides and heredi- 

20 tary trees of the old gentry ; boys smashing the 
beautiful windows of cathedrals ; Quakers riding 
naked through the market-place ; Fifth-monarchy 
men shouting for King Jesus ; agitators lecturing 
from the tops of tubs on the fate of Agag ; — all 



MILTON. 65 

these, they tell us, were the offspring of the Great 
Rebellion. 

66. Be it so. We are not careful to answer in 
this matter. These charges, were they infinitely 
more important, would not alter our opinion of an 5 
event which alone has made us to differ from the 
slaves who crouch beneath despotic sceptres. 
Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the civil 
war. They were the price of our liberty. Has 
the acquisition been worth the sacrifice ? It is 10 
the nature of the Devil of tyranny to tear and 
rend the body which he leaves. Are the miseries 
of continued possession less horrible than the 
struggles of the tremendous exorcism ? 

67. If it were possible that a people brought 15 
up under an intolerant and arbitrary system could 
subvert that system without acts of cruelty and 
folly, half the objections to despotic power would 
be removed. We should, in that case, be compelled 
to acknowledge that it at least produces no per- 20 
nicious effects on the intellectual and moral char- 
acter of a nation. We deplore the outrages which 
accompany revolutions. But the more violent 
the outrages, the more assured we feel that a 



66 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

revolution was necessary. The violence of those 
outrages will always be proportioned to the fero- 
city and ignorance of the people ; and the ferocity 
and ignorance of the people will be proportioned 

5 to the oppression and degradation under which 
they have been accustomed to live. Thus it was 
in our civil war. The heads of the church and 
state reaped only that which they had sown. The 
government had prohibited free discussion ; it had 

10 done its best to keep the people unacquainted with 
their duties and their rights. The retribution was 
just and natural. If our rulers suffered from 
popular ignorance, it was because they had them- 
selves taken away the key of knowledge. If they 

15 were assailed with blind fury, it was because they 
had exacted an equally blind submission. 

68. It is the character of such revolutions that 
we always see the worst of them at first. Till 
men have been some time free, they know lot 

20 how to use their freedom. The natives of wine 
countries are generally sober. In climates where 
wine is a rarity intemperance abounds. A newly 
liberated people may be compared to a northern 
army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It 



MILTON. 67 

is said that, when soldiers in such a situation first 
find themselves able to indulge without restraint 
in such a rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to 
be seen but intoxication. Soon, however, plenty 
tearhes discretion ; and, after wine has been for a 5 
few months their daily fare, they become more 
temperate than they had ever been in their own 
country. In the same manner, the final and per- 
manent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, 
and mercy. Its immediate effects are often atro- 10 
cious crimes, conflicting errors, scepticism on 
points the most clear, dogmatism on points the 
most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that 
its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down :' 
the scaffolding from the half -finished edifice ; they 15 
point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the 
comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the 
whole appearance ; and then ask in scorn where 
the promised splendor and comfort is to be found. 
If such miserable sophisms were to prevail there 20 
would never be a good house or a good govern- 
ment in the world. 

69. Arios to tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, 
by some mysterious law of her nature, was con- 



68 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

demned to appear at certain seasons in the form 
of a fonl and poisonous snake. Those who in- 
jured her during the period of her disguise were 
forever excluded from participation in the bless- 

5 ings which she bestowed. But to those who, in 
spite of her loathsome aspect, pitied and protected 
her, she afterwards revealed herself in the beauti- 
ful and celestial form which was natural to her, 
accompanied their steps, granted all their wishes, 

10 filled their houses with wealth, made them happy 
in love and victorious in war. Such a spirit is 
liberty. At times she takes the form of a hateful 
reptile. She grovels, she hisses, she stings. But 
woe to those who in disgust shall venture to crush 

15 her ! » And happy are those who, having dared to 
receive her in her degraded and frightful shape, 
shall at length be rewarded by her in the time of 
her beauty and her glory ! 

70. There is only one cure for the evils which 

20 newly acquired freedom produces ; and that cure 
is freedom. When a prisoner first leaves his cell 
he cannot bear the light of day : he is unable to 
discriminate colors, or recognize faces* But the 
remedy is, not to remand him into his dungeon, 



MILTON. 69 

but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The 
blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and 
bewilder nations which have become half blind 
in the house of bondage. But let them gaze on, 
and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few 5 
years men learn to reason. The extreme violence 
of opinions subsides. Hostile theories correct 
each other. The scattered elements of truth 
cease to contend, and begin to coalesce. And at 
length a system of justice and order is educed out 10 
of the chaos. 

71. Many politicians of our time are in the 
habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposi- 
tion, that no people ought to be free till they are 
fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of 15 
the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go 
into the water till he had learned to swim. If 
men are to wait for liberty till they become wise 
and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever. 

72. Therefore it is that we decidedly approve 20 
of the conduct of Milton and the other wise and 
good men who, in spite of much that was ridicu- 
lous and hateful in the conduct of their associates, 
stood firmly by the cause of Public Liberty. We 



'1. 



70 MAC ATI LAY'S ESSAYS. 

are not aware that the j)oet lias been charged with 
personal participation in any of the blamable 
excesses of that time. The favorite topic of his 
enemies is the line of conduct which he pursued 

5 with regard to the execution of the King. Of 
that celebrated proceeding we by no means ap- 
prove. Still we must say, in justice to the many 
eminent persons who concurred in it, and in justice 
more particularly to the eminent person who de- 

10 fended it, that nothing can be more absurd than 
the imputations which, for the last hundred and 
sixty years, it has been the fashion to cast upon 
the Regicides. We have, throughout, abstained 
from appealing to first principles. We will not 

15 appeal to them now. We recur again to the 
parallel case of the Revolution. What essential 
distinction can be drawn between the execution 
of the father and the deposition of the son ? 
What constitutional maxim is there which applies 

20 to the former and not to the latter? The King 
can do no wrong. If so, James was as innocent 
as Charles could have been. The minister only 
ought to be responsible for the acts of the Sover- 
eign. If so, why not impeach Jeffreys and retain 



MILTON. 71 

James ? The person of a King is sacred. Was 
the person of James considered sacred at the 
Boyne? To discharge cannon against an army in 
which a king is known to be posted is to approach 
pretty near to regicide. Charles, too, it should 5 
always be remembered, was put to death by men 
who had been exasperated by the hostilities of 
several years, and who had never been bound to 
him by any other tie than that which was common 
to them with all their fellow citizens. Those who 10 
drove James from his throne, who seduced his 
army, who alienated his friends, who first im- 
prisoned him in his palace, and then turned him 
out of it, who broke in upon his very slumbers by 
imperious messages, who pursued him with fire 15 
and sword from one part of the empire to another, 
who hanged, drew, and quartered his adherents, 
and attainted his innocent heir, were his nephew 
and his two daughters. When we reflect on all 
these tilings, we are at a loss to conceive how the 20 
same persons who, on the fifth of November, thank 
God for wonderfully conducting his servant 
William, and for making all opposition fall before 
him until he became our King and Governor, can, 



72 MACAU LAY'S ESSAYS. 

on the thirtieth of January, contrive to be afraid 
that the blood of the Royal Martyr may be visited 
on themselves and their children. 

73. We disapprove, we repeat, of the execution 

5 of Charles ; not because the constitution exempts 
the King from responsibility, for we know that all 
such maxims, however excellent, have their excep- 
tions ; nor because we feel any peculiar interest 
in his character, for we think that his sentence 

10 describes him with perfect justice as " a tyrant, a 
traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy ; " but 
because we are convinced that .the measure was 
most injurious to the cause of freedom. He 
whom it removed was a captive and a hostage : 

15 his heir, to whom the allegiance of every Royalist 
was instantly transferred, was at large. The 
Presbyterians could never have been perfectly 
reconciled to the father ; they had no such rooted 
enmity to the son. The great body of the people, 

20 also, contemplated that proceeding with feelings 
which, however unreasonable, no government could 
safely venture to outrage. 

74. But though we think the conduct of the 
Regicides blamable, that of Milton appears to us 



MILTON. 73 

in a very different light. The deed was done. It 
could not be undone. The evil was incurred; and 
the object was to render it as small as possible. 
We censure the chiefs of the army for not yielding 
to the popular opinion ; but we cannot censure 5 
Milton for wishing to change that opinion. The 
very feeling which would have restrained us from 
committing the act, would have led us, after it had 
been committed, to defend it against the ravings 
of servility and superstition. For the sake of 10 
public liberty we wish that the thing had not been 
done while the people disapproved of it. But, for 
the sake of public liberty, we should also have 
wished the people to approve of it when it was 
done. If anything more were wanting to the 15 
justification of Milton, the book of Salmasius 
would furnish it. That miserable performance is 
now with justice considered only as a beacon to 
word-catchers who wish to become statesmen. 
The celebrity of the man who refuted it, the 20 
" JSneae magni dextra," gives it all its fame with 
the present generation, hi that age the state of 
things was different. It was not then fully 
understood how vast an interval separates the 



74 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

mere classical scholar from the political philos- 
opher. Nor can it he doubted that a treatise 
which, hearing the name of so eminent a critic, 
attacked the fundamental principles of all free 

5 governments, must, if suffered to remain un- 
answered, have produced a most pernicious effect 
on the public mind. 

75. We wish to add a few words relative to 
another subject, on which the enemies of Milton 

10 delight to dwell, — his conduct during the ad- 
ministration of the Protector. That an enthusi- 
astic votary of liberty should accept office under 
a military usurper seems, no doubt, at first sight, 
extraordinary. But all the circumstances in 

15 which the country was then placed were ex- 
traordinary. The ambition of Oliver was of no 
vulgar kind. He never seems to have coveted 
despotic power. He at first fought sincerely and 
manfully for the Parliament, and never deserted 

20 it till it had deserted its duty. If he dissolved it 
by force, it was not till he found that the few mem- 
bers who remained after so many deaths, secessions, 
and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate to 
themselves a power which they held only in trust, 



MILTON. 75 

and to inflict upon England the curse of a Venetian 
oligarchy. But even when thus placed by violence 
at the head of affairs, he did not assume unlimited 
power. He gave the country a constitution far 
more perfect than any which had at that time 5 
been known in the world. He reformed the 
representative system in a manner which has 
extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon. For 
himself he demanded indeed the first place in the 
commonwealth ; but with powers scarcely so great 10 
as those of a Dutch stadtholder or an American 
president. He gave the Parliament a voice in the 
appointment of ministers, and left to it the whole 
legislative authority, not even reserving to himself 
a veto on its enactments ; and he did not require 15 
that the chief magistracy should be hereditary in 
his family. Thus far, Ave think, if the circum- 
stances of the time and the opportunities which 
he had of aggrandizing himself be fairly con- 
sidered, he will not lose by comparison with 20 
Washington or Bolivar. Had his moderation been 
met by corresponding moderation, there is no reason 
to think that he would have overstepped the line 
which he had traced for himself. But when he 



76 MAC AULA Y\S ESSAYS. 

found that his parliaments questioned the author- 
ity under which they met, and that he was in 
danger of being deprived of the restricted power 
which was absolutely necessary to his personal 

5 safety, then, it must be acknowledged, he adopted 
a more arbitrary policy. 

76. Yet, though we believe that the intentions 
of Cromwell were at first honest, though we be- 
lieve that he was driven from the noble course 

10 which he had marked out for himself by the al- 
most irresistible force of circumstances, though 
we admire, in common with all men of all parties, 
the ability and energy of his splendid adminis- 
tration, we are not pleading for arbitrary and 

15 lawless power, even in his hands. We know 
that a good constitution is infinitely better than 
the best despot. But we suspect, that at the 
time of which we speak, the violence of religious 
and political enmities rendered a stable and happy 

20 settlement next to impossible. The choice lay, 
not between Cromwell and liberty, but between 
Cromwell and the Stuarts. That Milton chose 
well, no man can doubt Avho fairly compares the 
events of the protectorate with those of the thirty 



MILTON. 77 

years which succeeded it, the darkest and most 
disgraceful in the English annals. Cromwell was 
evidently laying, though in an irregular manner, 
the foundations of an admirable system. Never 
before had religious liberty and the freedom of 5 
discussion been enjoyed in a greater degree. 
Never had the national honor been better upheld 
abroad, or the seat of justice better rilled at home. 
And it was rarely that any opposition which 
stopped short of open rebellion provoked the 10 
resentment of the liberal and magnanimous 
usurper. The institutions which lie had estal> 
lished, as set down in the Instrument of Govern- 
ment and the Humble Petition and Advice, were 
excellent. His practice, it is true, too often de- 15 
parted from the theory of these institutions. But 
had he lived a few years longer, it is probable that 
his institutions would have survived him, and 
that his arbitrary practice would have died with 
him. His power had not been consecrated by 20 
ancient prejudices. It was upheld only by his 
great personal qualities. Little, therefore, was 
to be dreaded from a second protector, unless he 
were also a second Oliver Cromwell. The events 



78 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

which followed his decease are the most complete 
vindication of those who exerted themselves to 
uphold his authority. His death dissolved the 
whole frame of society. The army rose against the 

5 Parliament, the different corps of the army against 
each other. Sect raved against sect. Party 
plotted against party. The Presbyterians, in 
their eagerness to be revenged on the Independ- 
ents, sacrificed their own liberty, and deserted all 

10 their old principles. Without casting one glance 

on the past, or requiring one stipulation for the 

future, they threw down their freedom at the feet 

of the most frivolous and heartless of tyrants. 

77. Then came those days, never to be recalled 

15 without a blush, the days of servitude without 
loyalty, and sensuality without love ; of dwarfish 
talents and gigantic vices ; the paradise of cold 
hearts and narrow minds ; the golden age of the 
coward, the bigot, and the slave. The King 

20 cringed to his rival that he might trample on 
his people, sank into a viceroy of France, and 
pocketed with complacent infamy her degrad- 
ing insults and her more degrading gold. The 
caresses of harlots, and the jests of buffoons, regu- 



MILTON. 79 

lated the policy of the state. The government 
had just ability enough to deceive, and just re- 
ligion enough to persecute. The principles of 
liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, 
and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning 5 
dean. In every high place, worship was paid to 
Charles and James, Belial and Moloch ; and Eng- 
land propitiated those obscene and cruel idols with 
the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime 
succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till 10 
the race, accursed of God and man, was a second 
time driven forth, to wander on the face of the 
earth, and to be a byword and a shaking of the 
head to the nations. 

78. Most of the remarks which we have 15 
hitherto made on the public character of Milton, 
apply to him only as one of a large body. We 
shall proceed to notice some of the peculiarities 
which distinguished him from his contemporaries. 
And for that purpose it is necessary to take a 20 
short survey of the parties into which the political 
world was at that time divided. We must premise 
that our observations are intended to apply only 
to those who adhered, from a sincere preference, 



80 MACAULAW ESSAYS. 

to one or to the other side. In days of public 
commotion every faction, like an Oriental army, 
is attended by a crowd of camp-followers, a use- 
less and heartless rabble, who prowl round its 

5 line of march in the hope of picking up something 
under its protection, but desert it in the day of 
battle, and often join to exterminate it after a 
defeat. England, at the time of which we are 
treating, abounded with fickle and selfish polili- 

10 cians, who transferred their support to every 
government as it rose ; who kissed the hand of 
the king in 1640, and spat in his face in 1649; 
who shouted with equal glee when Cromwell was 
inaugurated in Westminster Hall, and when he 

15 was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn ; who dined 
on calves' heads, or stuck up oak-branches, as cir- 
cumstances altered, without the slightest shame 
or repugnance. These we leave out of the ac- 
count. We take our estimate of parties from 

20 those who really deserve to be called partisans. 

79. We would speak first of the Puritans, the 
most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the 
world has ever produced. The odious and ridicu- 
lous parts of their character lie on the surface. 



MILTON. 81 

He that runs may read them ; nor have there been 
wanting attentive and malicious observers to point 
them out. For many years after the Restoration, 
they were the theme of unmeasured invective and 
derision. They were exposed to the utmost licen- 5 
tiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time 
when the press and the stage were most licentious. 
They were not men of letters ; they were, as a 
body, unpopular ; they could not defend them- 
selves ; and the public would not take them under 10 
its protection. They were therefore abandoned, 
without reserve, to the tender mercies of the sati- 
rists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity 
of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, 
their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew 15 
names, the Scriptural phrases which they intro- 
duced on every occasion, their contempt of human 
learning, their detestation of polite amusements, 
were indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is 
not from the laughers alone that the philosophy 20 
of history is to be learned. And he who ap- 
proaches this subject should carefully guard 
against the influence of that potent ridicule which 
has already misled so many excellent writers. 



82 MAC A UL AY'S ESSAYS. 

" Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio 
Che mortali perigli in se contiene: 
Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio, 
Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene." 

5 80. Those who roused the people to resistance ; 
who directed their measures through a long series 
of eventful years ; who formed, out of the most 
unpromising materials, the finest army that Europe 
had ever seen; who trampled down King, Church, 

10 and Aristocracy; who, in the short intervals of 
domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name 
of England terrible to every nation on the face of 
the earth, were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their 
absurdities were mere external badges, like the 

15 signs of freemasonry, or the dresses of friars. We 
regret that these badges were not more attractive. 
We regret that a body to whose courage and tal- 
ents mankind has owed inestimable obligations 
had not the lofty elegance which distinguished 

20 some of the adherents of Charles the First, or the 
easy good-breeding for which the Court of Charles 
the Second was celebrated. But, if we must make 
our choice, we shall, like Bassanio in the play, 
turn from the specious caskets which contain only 



MILTON. 83 

the Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix on 
the plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure. 
81. The Puritans were men whose minds had 
derived a peculiar character from the daily con- 
templation of superior beings and eternal interests. 5 
Not content witli acknowledging, in general terms, 
an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed 
every event to the will of the Great Being, for 
whose power nothing was too vast, for whose 
inspection nothing was too minute. To know 10 
him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them 
the great end of existence. They rejected with 
contempt the ceremonious homage which other 
sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. 
Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the 15 
Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to 
gaze full on his intolerable brightness, and to com- 
mune with him face to face. Hence originated 
their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The 
difference between the greatest and the meanest of 2<i 
mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with 
the boundless interval which separated the whole 
race from him on whom their own eyes were con- 
stantly fixed. They recognized no title to supe- 



84 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

riority but his favor; aud, confident of that favor, 
they despised all the accomplishments and all the 
dignities of the world If they were unacquainted 
with the works of philosophers and poets, they 

5 were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their 
names were not found in the registers of heralds, 
they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their 
steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of 
menials, legions of ministering angels had charge 

10 over them. Their palaces were houses not made 
with hands ; their diadems crowns of glory which 
should never fade away. On the rich and the 
eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down 
with contempt ; for they esteemed themselves rich 

15 in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a 
more sublime language, nobles by the right of an 
earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a 
mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a 
being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible 

20 importance belonged, on whose slightest action 
the spirits of light and darkness looked with 
anxious interest, who had been destined, before 
heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity 
which should continue when heaven and earth 



MILTON. 85 

should have passed away. Events which short- 
sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had 
been ordained on his account. For his sake em- 
pires had risen, and flourished and decayed. For 
his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by 5 
the pen of the Evangelist and the harp of the 
prophet. He had been wrested by no common 
deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He 
had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar 
agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It 10 
was for him that the sun had been darkened, that 
the rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen, 
that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of 
her expiring God. 

82. Thus the Puritan was made up of two dif- 15 
ferent men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, 
gratitude, passion ; the other proud, calm, inflexi- 
ble, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust 
before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck 
of his king. In his devotional retirement, he 20 
prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. 
He was half maddened by glorious or terrible 
illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the 
tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam 



86 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

of the Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from 
dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, lie thought 
himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial 
year. Like Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness 

5 of his soul that God had hid his face from him. 
But when he took his seat in the council, or girt 
on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings 
of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind 
them. People avIio saw nothing of the godly 

10 but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing 
from them but their groans and their whining 
hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little 
reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall 
of debate or in the field of battle. These fanatics 

15 brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of 
judgment and an immutability of purpose which 
some writers have thought inconsistent with their 
religious zeal, but which were in fact the neces- 
sary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings 

20 on one subject made them tranquil on every other. 
One overpowering sentiment had subjected to 
itself pity and hatred, ambition and fear. Death 

, had lost its terrors and pleasure its charms. They 
had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and 



MILT OX. 87 

their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. 
Enthusiasm had made them Stoics, had cleared 
their minds from every vulgar passion and preju- 
dice, and raised them above the influence of 
danger and of corruption. It sometimes might 5 
lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to 
choose unwise means. The} T went through the 
world, like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with his 
flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, 
mingling with human beings, but having neither 10 
part nor lot in human infirmities; insensible to 
fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain; not to be pierced 
by any weapon, not to be withstood by any 
barrier. 

83. Such we believe to have been the character 15 
of the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of 
their manners. We dislike the sullen gloom of 
their domestic habits. We acknowledge that the 
tone of their minds was often injured by straining 
after things too high for mortal reach; and we 20 
know that, in spite of their hatred of Popery, they 
too often fell into the worst vices of that bad sys- 
tem, intolerance and extravagant austerity ; that 
they had their anchorites and their crusades, their 



88 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

Dunstans and their l)e Montforts, their Dominies 
and their Escobars. Yet, when all circumstances 
are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to 
pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and a 

5 useful body. 

84. The Puritans espoused the cause of civil 
liberty mainly because it was the cause of religion. 
There was another party, by no means numerous, 
but distinguished by learning and ability, which 

10 acted with them on very different principles. We 
speak of those whom Cromwell was accustomed to 
call the Heathens, men who were, in the phraseol- 
ogy of that time, doubting Thomases or careless 
Gallios with regard to religious subjects, but pas- 

15 sionate worshippers of freedom. Heated by the 
study of ancient literature, they set up their 
country as their idol, and proposed to themselves 
the heroes of Plutarch as their examples. They 
seem to have borne some resemblance to the 

20 Brissotines of the French Revolution. But it is 
not very easy to draw the line of distinction be- 
tween them and their devout associates, whose 
tone and manner they sometimes found it con- 
venient to affect, and sometimes, it is probable, 
imperceptibly adopted. 



MILTON. 89 

85. We now come to the Royalists. We shall 
attempt to speak of them, as we have spoken of 
their antagonists, with perfect candor. We shall 
not charge upon a whole party the profligacy and 
baseness of the horse-boys, gamblers, and bravoes, 5 
whom the hope of license and plunder attracted 
from all the dens of Whitefriars to the standard of 
Charles, and who disgraced their associates by 
excesses which, under the stricter discipline of the 
Parliamentary armies, were never tolerated. We 10 
will select a more favorable specimen. Thinking 
as we do that the cause of the King was the cause 
of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot refrain 
from looking with complacency on the character 
of the honest old Cavaliers. We feel a national 15 
pride in comparing them with the instruments 
which the despots of other countries are compelled 
to employ, with the mutes who throng their ante- 
chambers, and the Janissaries who mount guard at 
their gates. Cur royalist countrymen were not 20 
heartless, dangling courtiers, bowing at every step, 
and simpering at every word. They were not 
mere machines for destruction, dressed up in uni- 
forms, caned into skill, intoxicated into valor, 



90 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

defending without love, destroying without hatred. 
There was a freedom in their subserviency, a 
nobleness in their very degradation. The senti- 
ment of individual independence was strong within 

5 them. They were indeed misled, but by no base 
or selfish motive. Compassion and romantic honor, 
the prejudices of childhood, and the venerable 
names of history, threw over them a spell potent 
as that of Duessa ; and, like the Red-Cross Knight, 

10 they thought that they were doing battle for an 
injured beauty, while they defended a false and 
loathsome sorceress. In truth, they scarcely en- 
tered at all into the merits of the political question. 
It was not for a treacherous king or an intolerant 

15 church that they fought, but for the old banner 
which had waved in so many battles over the heads 
of their fathers, and for the altars at which they 
had received the hands of their brides. Though 
nothing could be more erroneous than their political 

20 opinions, they possessed, in a far greater degree 
than their adversaries, those qualities which are 
the grace of private life. With many of the vices 
of the Round Table, they had also many of its 
virtues, — courtesy, generosity, veracity, tender- 



MILTON. 91 

ness, and respect for women. They had far more 
both of profound and of polite learning than the 
Puritans. Their manners were more engaging, 
their tempers more amiable, their tastes more 
elegant, and their households more cheerful. 5 

86. Milton did not strictly belong to any of the 
classes which wc have described. He was not a 
Puritan. He was not a free-thinker. He was not 
a Royalist. In his character the noblest qualities 
of every party were combined in harmonious union. 10 
From the Parliament and from the Court, from the 
conventicle and from the Gothic cloister, from the 
gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, 
and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable 
Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself 15 
whatever was great and good, while it rejected all 
the base and pernicious ingredients by which those 
finer elements were defiled. Like the Puritans, 
he lived 

" As ever in his great task-master's eye." 20 

Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on 
an Almighty Judge and an eternal reward. And 
hence he acquired their contempt of external cir- 



92 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

cumstances, their fortitude, their tranquillity, their 
inflexible resolution. But not the coolest sceptic 
or the most profane scoffer was more perfectly 
free from the contagion of their frantic delusions, 

5 their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, 
their scorn of science, and their aversion to pleas- 
ure. Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he 
had neverthelesss all the estimable and ornamental 
qualities which were almost entirely monopolized 

10 by the party of the tyrant. There was none who 
had a stronger sense of the value of literature, a 
finer relish for every elegant amusement, or a more 
chivalrous delicacy of honor and love. Though 
his opinions were democratic, his tastes and his 

15 associations were such as harmonize best with 
monarchy and aristocracy. He was under the in- 
fluence of all the feelings by which the gallant 
Cavaliers were misled. But of those feelings he 
was the master and not the slave. Like the hero 

20 of Homer, he enjoyed all the pleasures of fascina- 
tion ; but he was not fascinated. He listened to 
the song of the Sirens ; yet he glided by without 
being seduced to their fatal shore. He tasted the 
cup of Circe; but he bore about him a sure anti- 



HILTON. 93 

dote against the effects of its bewitching sweet- 
ness. The illusions which captivated his imagina- 
tion never impaired his reasoning powers. The 
statesman was proof against the splendor, the 
solemnity, and the romance which enchanted the 5 
poet. Any person who will contrast the senti- 
ments expressed in his treatises on Prelacy with 
the exquisite lines on ecclesiastical architecture 
and music in the Penseroso, which was published 
about the same time, will understand our meaning. 10 
This is an inconsistency which, more than any- 
thing else, raises his character in our estimation, 
because it shows how many private tastes and feel- 
ings he sacrificed, in order to do what he con- 
sidered his duty to mankind. It is the very 15 
struggle of the noble Othello. His heart relents ; 
but his hand is firm. He does naught in hate, 
but all in honor. He kisses the beautiful deceiver 
before he destroys her. 

87. That from which the public character of 20 
Milton derives its great and peculiar splendor, still 
remains to be mentioned. If he exerted himself to 
overthrow a forsworn king and a persecuting hier- 
archy, he exerted himself in conjunction with 



94 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

others. But the glory of the battle which he 
fought for the species of freedom which is the 
most valuable, and which was then the least under- 
stood, the freedom of the human mind, is all his 

5 own. Thousands and tens of thousands among 
his contemporaries raised their voices against ship- 
money and the Star Chamber. But there were 
few indeed who discerned the more fearful evils 
of moral and intellectual slavery, and the benefits 

10 which would result from the liberty of the press 
and the unfettered exercise of private judgment. 
These were the objects which Milton justly con- 
ceived to be the most important. He was desirous 
that the people should think for themselves as 

15 well as tax themselves, and should be emancipated 
from the dominion of prejudice as well as from 
that of Charles. He knew that those who, with 
the best intentions, overlooked these schemes of 
reform, and contented themselves with pulling 

20 down the King and imprisoning the malignants, 
acted like the heedless brothers in his own poem, 
who, in their eagerness to disperse the train of the 
sorcerer, neglected the means of liberating the 
captive. They thought only of conquering when 
they should have thought of disenchanting. 



MILTON. 95 

"Oh, ye mistook ! Ye should have snatched his wand 
And bound him fast. Without the rod reversed, 
And backward mutters of dissevering power, 
We cannot free the lady that sits here 
Bound in strong fetters fixed and motionless." 5 

88. To reverse the rod, to spell the charm back- 
ward, to break the ties which bound a stupefied 
people to the seat of enchantment, was the noble 
aim of Milton. To this all his public conduct was 
directed. For this he joined the Presbyterians ; 10 
for this he forsook them. He fought their peril- 
ous battle ; but he turned away with disdain from 
their insolent triumph. He saw that they, like 
those whom they had vanquished, were hostile to 
the liberty of thought. He therefore joined the 15 
Independents, and called upon Cromwell to break 
the secular chain, and to save free conscience from 
the paw of the Presbyterian wolf. With a view to 
the same great object, he attacked the licensing 
system, in that sublime treatise which every states- 20 
man should wear as a sign upon his hand and as 
frontlets between his eyes. His attacks were, in 
general, directed less against particular abuses 
than against those deeply seated errors on which 
almost all abuses are founded, the servile worship 25 



96 MACAU LAY'S ESSAYS. 

of eminent men and the irrational dread of inno- 
vation. 

89. That he might shake the foundations of 
these debasing sentiments more effectually, he 

5 always selected for himself the boldest literary 
services. He never came up in the rear, when the 
outworks had been carried and the breach entered. 
He pressed into the forlorn hope. At the begin- 
ning of the changes, he wrote with incomparable 

10 energy and eloquence against the bishops. But, 
when his opinion seemed likely to prevail, he 
passed on to other subjects, and abandoned prelacy 
to the crowd of writers who now hastened to insult 
a falling party. There is no more hazardous enter- 

15 prise than that of bearing the torch of truth into 
those dark and infected recesses in which no light 
has ever shone. But it was the choice and the 
pleasure of Milton to penetrate the noisome vapors, 
and to brave the terrible explosion. Those who 

20 most disapprove of his opinions must respect the 
hardihood with which he maintained them. He, 
in general, left to others the credit of expounding 
and defending the popular parts of his religious 
and political creed. He took his own stand upon 



MILTON. 97 

those which the great body of his countrymen 
reprobated as criminal, or derided as paradoxical. 
He stood up for divorce and regicide. He attacked 
the prevailing systems of education. His radiant 
and beneficent career resembled that of the god of 5 
light and fertility : — 

•• Nitor in adversum; nee me, qui csetera, vincit 
Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi." 

90. It is to be regretted that the prose writings 
of Milton should, in our time, be so little read. 10 
As compositions, they deserve the attention of 
every man who wishes to become acquainted with 
the full power of the English language. They 
abound with passages compared with which the 
finest declamations of Burke sink into insignifi- 15 
cance. They are a perfect field of cloth of gold. 
The style is stiff with gorgeous embroidery. Not 
even in the earlier books of the Paradise Lost has 
the great poet ever risen higher than in those 
parts of his controversial works in Avhich his 20 
feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts 
of devotional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow 
his own majestic language, "a sevenfold chorus of 
hallelujahs and harping symphonies." 



!>S MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

91. We had intended to look more closely at 
these performances, to analyze the peculiarities of 
the diction, to dwell at some length on the sublime 
wisdom of the Areopagitica and the nervous rhet- 

5 oric of the Iconoclast, and to point out some of 
those magnificent passages which occur in the 
Treatise of Reformation, and the Animadversions 
on the Remonstrant. But the length to which 
our remarks have already extended renders this 

10 impossible. 

92. We must conclude. And yet we can 
scarcely tear ourselves away from the subject. 
The days immediately following the publication 
of this relic of Milton appear to be peculiarly set 

15 apart, and consecrated to his memory. And we 
shall scarcely be censured if, on this his festival, 
we be found lingering near his shrine, how worth- 
less soever may be the offering which we bring to 
it. While this book lies on our table, we seem to 

20 be contemporaries of the writer. We are trans- 
ported a hundred and fifty years back. We can 
almost fancy that we are visiting him in his small 
lodging; that we see him sitting at the old organ 
beneath the faded green hangings; that we can 



MILTON. 99 

catch the quick twinkle of his eyes, rolling in 
vain to find the day ; that we are reading in the 
lines of his noble countenance the proud and 
mournful history of his glory and his affliction. 
We image to ourselves the breathless silence in 5 
which we should listen to his slightest word; the 
passionate veneration with which we should kneel 
to kiss his hand and weep upon it; the earnestness 
with which we should endeavor to console him, if 
indeed such a spirit could need consolation, for 10 
the neglect of an age unworthy of his talents and 
his virtues; the eagerness with which we should 
contest with his daughters, or with his Quaker 
friend Elwood, the privilege of reading Homer to 
him, or of taking down the immortal accents 15 
which flowed from his lips. 

93. These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet 
we cannot be ashamed of them; nor shall we be 
sorry if what we have written shall in any degree 
excite them in other minds. We are not much in 20 
the habit of idolizing either the living or the 
dead. And we think that there is no more certain 
indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect 
than that propensity which, for want of a better 



L.ofC. 



100 MA CA ULA F'S ESSA YS. 

name, we will venture to christen Boswellism. 

But there are a few characters which have stood 
the closest scrutiny and the severest tests, which 
have been tried in the furnace and have proved 

5 pure, which have been weighed in the balance and 
have not been found wanting, which have been 
declared sterling by the general consent of man- 
kind, and which are visibly stamped with the 
image and superscription of the Most High. 

10 These great men we trust that we know how to 
prize ; and of these was Milton. The sight of his 
books, the sound of his name, are pleasant to us. 
His thoughts resemble those celestial fruits and 
flowers which the Virgin Martyr of Mas singer 

15 sent down from the gardens of Paradise to the 
earth, and which were distinguished from the 
productions of other soils, not only by superior 
bloom aud sweetness, but by miraculous efficacy 
to invigorate and to heal. They are powerful, not 

20 only to delight, but to elevate and purify. Nor 
do we envy the man who can study either the 
life or the writings of the great poet and patriot, 
without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the suit- 
lime works with which his genius has enriched 



MILTON. 101 

our literature, but the zeal with which he labored 
for the public good, the fortitude with which he 
endured every private calamity, the lofty disdain 
with which he looked down on temptations and 
dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to 5 
bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so 
sternly kept with his country and with his 
fame. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 
ADDISON. 

The Life of Joseph Addison. By Lucy Aikix. 2 vols., 8 vo. 
London: 1S4: 1 ,. 

1. Some reviewers are of opinion that a lady 
who dares to publish a book renounces by that act 
the franchises appertaining to her sex, and can 
claim no exemption from the utmost rigor of criti- 
cal procedure. From that opinion Ave dissent. 5 
We admit, indeed, that in a country which boasts 
of many female writers, eminently qualified by 
their talents and acquirements to influence the 
public mind, it would be of most pernicious con- 
sequence that inaccurate history or unsound phi- 10 
losophy should be suffered to pass uncensured, 
merely because the offender chanced to be a lady. 
But we conceive that, on such occasions, a critic 
would do well to imitate the courteous knight who 
found himself compelled by duty to keep the lists 15 
against Bradamante. He, Ave are told, defended 
103 



104 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

successfully the cause of which he was the cham- 
pion ; but before the fight began, exchanged 
Balisarda for a less deadly sword, of which he 
carefully blunted the point and edge. 1 

5 2. Nor are the immunities of sex the only im- 
munities which Miss Aikin may rightfully plead. 
Several of her works, and especially the very 
pleasing Memoires of the Reign of James the First, 
have fully entitled her to the privileges enjoyed 

10 by good writers. One of those privileges we hold 
to be this, that such writers, when, either from the 
unlucky choice of a subject, or from the indolence 
too often produced by success, they happen to 
fail, shall not be subjected to the severe discipline 

15 which it is sometimes necessary to inflict upon 
dunces and impostors, but shall merely be re- 
minded by a gentle touch, like that with which 
the Laputan flapper roused his dreaming lord, that 
it is high time to wake. 

20 3. Our readers will probably infer from what we 

have said that Miss Aikin's book has disappointed 

us. The truth is, that she is not well acquainted 

with her subject. No person who is not familiar 

1 Orlando Furioso, xlv. 68. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 105 

with the political and literary history of England 
during the reigns of William the Third, of Anne, 
and of George the First, can possibly write a good 
life of Addison. Now, we mean no reproach to 
Miss Aikin, and many will think that Ave pay her 5 
a compliment, when we say that her studies have 
taken a different direction. She is better ac- 
quainted with Shakespeare and Raleigh, than with 
Congreve and Prior; and is far more at home 
among the ruffs and peaked beards of Theobald's 10 
than among the Steenkirks and flowing periwigs 
which surrounded Queen Anne's tea-table at 
Hampton. She seems to have written about the 
Elizabethan age, because she had read much about 
it ; she seems, on the other hand, to have read a 15 
little about the age of Addison, because she had 
determined to write about it. The consequence is 
that she has had to describe men and things with- 
out having either a correct or a vivid idea of them, 
and that she has often fallen into errors of a very 20 
serious kind. The reputation which Miss Aikin 
has justly earned stands so high, and the charm of 
Addison's letters is so great, that a second edition 
of this work may probably be required. If so, we 



106 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

hope that every paragraph will he revised, and 
that every date and fact ahont which there can he 
the smallest douht will be carefully verified. 

4. To Addison himself we are hound by a senti- 

5 ment as much like affection as any sentiment can 
he, which is inspired by one who has been sleeping 
a hundred and twenty years in Westminster 
Abbey. We trust, however, that this feeling will 
not betray us into that abject idolatry which we 

10 have often had occasion to reprehend in others, 
and which seldom fails to make both the idolater 
and the idol ridiculous. A man of genius and 
virtue is but a man. All his powers cannot be 
equally developed ; nor can we expect from him 

15 perfect self-knowledge. We need not, therefore, 
hesitate to admit that Addison has left us some 
compositions which do not rise above mediocrity, 
some heroic poems hardly equal to Parnell's, some 
criticism as superficial as Dr. Blair's, and a tragedy 

20 not very much better than Dr. Johnson's. It is 
praise enough to say of a writer that, in a high de- 
partment of literature, in which many eminent 
writers have distinguished themselves, he has had 
no equal ; and this may with strict justice be said 

25 of Addison. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 107 

5. As a man, he may not have deserved the 
adoration which he received from those who, be- 
witched by his fascinating society, and indebted 
for all the comforts of life to his generous and 
delicate friendship, worshipped him nightly in his 5 
favorite temple at Button's. But, after full in- 
quiry and impartial reflection, we have long been 
convinced that he deserved as much love and 
esteem as can be justly claimed by any of our 
infirm and erring race. Some blemishes may un- 10 
doubtedly be detected in his character; but the 
more carefully it is examined, the more it will 
appear, to use the phrase of the old anatomists, 
sound in the noble parts, free from all taint of 
perfidy, of cowardice, of cruelty, of ingratitude, 15 
of envy. Men may easily be named in whom 
some particular good disposition has been more 
conspicuous than in Addison. But the just har- 
mony of qualities, the exact temper between the 
stern and the humane virtues, the habitual ob- 20 
servance of every law, not only of moral rectitude, 
but of moral grace and dignity, distinguish him 
from all men who have been tried by equally 
strong temptations, and about whose conduct we 
possess equally full information. 25 



108 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

6. His father was the Reverened Lancelot 
Addison, who, though eclipsed by his more cele- 
brated son, made some figure in the world, and 
occupies with credit two folio pages in the Bio- 

5 graphia Britannica. Lancelot was sent up as a 
poor scholar from Westmoreland to Queen's Col- 
lege, Oxford, in the time of the Commonwealth ; 
made some progress in learning; became, like 
most of his fellow-students, a violent Royalist; 

10 lampooned the heads of the university, and was 
forced to ask pardon on his bended knees. When 
he had left college he earned a humble subsistence 
by reading the liturgy of the fallen church to the 
families of those sturdy squires whose nianor- 

15 houses were scattered over the Wild of Sussex. 
After the Restoration his loyalty was rewarded 
with the post of chaplain to the garrison of Dun- 
kirk. When Dunkirk was sold to France he lost 
his employment. But Tangier had been ceded by 

20 Portugal to England as part of the marriage por- 
tion of the Infanta Catharine ; and to Tangier 
Lancelot Addison was sent. A more miserable 
situation can hardly be conceived. It was diffi- 
cult to say whether the unfortunate settlers were 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 109 

more tormented by the heats or by the rains, by 
the soldiers within the wall or by the Moors with- 
out it. One advantage the chaplain had. He 
enjoyed an excellent opportunity of studying the 
history and manners of Jews and Mahometans ; 5 
and of this opportunity he appears to have made 
excellent use. On his return to England, after 
some years of banishment, he published an inter- 
esting volume on the Polity and Religion of Bar- 
bary, and another on the Hebrew Customs and the 10 
State of Rabbinical Learning. He rose to emi- 
nence in his profession, and became one of the 
royal chaplains, a Doctor of Divinity, Archdeacon 
of Salisbury, and Dean of Lichfield. It is said 
that he would have been made a bishop after the 15 
Revolution if he had not given offence to the gov- 
ernment by strenuously opposing, in the Convoca- 
tion of 1689, the liberal policy of William and 
Tillotson. 

7. In 1672, not long after Dr. Addison's return 20 
from Tangier, his son Joseph was born. Of 
Joseph's childhood we know little. He learned 
his rudiments at school in his father's neighbor- 
hood, and was then sent to the Charter House. 



110 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

The anecdotes which are popularly related about 
his boyish tricks do not harmonize very well with 
what we know of his riper years. There remains 
a tradition that he was the ringleader in a barring 

5 out, and another tradition that he ran away from 
school and hid himself in a wood, where he fed on 
berries and slept in a hollow tree, till after a long 
search he was discovered and brought home. If 
these stories be true, it would be curious to know 

10 by what moral discipline so mutinous and enter- 
prising a lad was transformed into the gentlest 
and most modest of men. 

8. We have abundant proof that, whatever 
Joseph's pranks may have been, he pursued his 

15 studies vigorously and successfully. At fifteen 
he was not only fit for the university, but carried 
thither a classical taste and a stock of learning 
which would have done honor to a Master of Arts. 
He was entered at Queen's College, Oxford ; but 

20 he had not been many months there when some of 
his Latin verses fell by accident into the hands 
of Dr. Lancaster, Dean of Magdalene College. 
The young scholar's diction and versification were 
already such as veteran professors might envy. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. Ill 

Dr. Lancaster was desirous to serve a boy of such 
promise ; nor was an opportunity long wanting. 
The Revolution had just taken place ; and no- 
where had it been hailed with more delight than 
at Magdalene College. That great and opulent 5 
corporation had been treated by James and by his 
chancellor with an insolence and injustice which, 
even in such a prince and in such a minister, may 
justly excite amazement, and which had done more 
than even the prosecution of the bishops to alien- 10 
ate the Church of England from the throne. A 
president, duly elected, had been violently ex- 
pelled from his dwelling : a Papist had been set 
over the society by a royal mandate: the Fellows, 
who, in conformity with their oaths, had refused 15 
to submit to this usurper, had been driven forth 
from their quiet cloisters and gardens, to die of 
want or to live on charity. But the day of redress 
and retribution speedily came. The intruders 
were ejected : the venerable House was again 20 
inhabited by its old inmates : learning nourished 
under the rule of the wise and virtuous Hough ; 
and with learning was united a mild and liberal 
spirit too often wanting in the princely colleges of 



112 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

Oxford. In consequence of the troubles through 
which the society had passed, there had been no 
valid election of new members during the year 
1688. In 1689, therefore, there was twice the 

5 ordinary number of vacancies ; and thus Dr. 
Lancaster found it easy to procure for his young 
friend admittance to the advantages of a founda- 
tion then generally esteemed the wealthiest in 
Europe. 

10 9. At Magdalene Addison resided during ten 
years. He was at first one of those scholars who 
are called Demies, but was subsequently elected a 
fellow. His college is still proud of his name ; 
his portrait still hangs in the hall ; and strangers 

15 are still told that his favorite walk was under the 
elms which fringe the meadow on the banks of 
the Cherwell. It is said, and is highly probable, 
that he was distinguished among his fellow-stu- 
dents by the delicacy of his feelings, by the shy- 

20 ness of his manners, and by the assiduity with 
which he often prolonged his studies far into the 
night. It is certain that his reputation for ability 
and learning stood high. Many years later the 
ancient doctors of Magdalene continued to talk in 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 113 

their common room of his boyish compositions, 
and expressed their sorrow that no copy of exer- 
cises so remarkable had been preserved. 

10. It is proper, however, to remark that Miss 
Aikin has committed the error, very pardonable in a 5 
lady, of overrating Addison's classical attainments. 
In one department of learning, indeed, his pro- 
ficiency was such as it is hardly possible to over- 
rate. His knowledge of the Latin poets, from 
Lucretius and Catullus down to Claudian and io 
Prudentins, was singularly exact and profound. 
He understood them thoroughly, entered into their 
spirit, and had the finest and most discriminating 
perception of all their peculiarities of style and 
melody ; nay, he copied their manner with ad- 15 
mirable skill, and surpassed, we think, all their 
British imitators who had preceded him, Buchan- 
an and Milton alone excepted. This is high 
praise ; and beyond this we cannot with justice go. 
It is clear that Addison's serious attention during 20 
his residence at the university was almost entirely 
concentrated on Latin poetry, and that, if he did 
not wholly neglect other provinces of ancient 
literature, he vouchsafed to them only a cursory 



114 MA CAUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

glance. He does not appear to have attained 
more than an ordinary acquaintance with the 
political and moral writers of Rome ; nor was his 
own Latin prose by any means equal to his Latin 

5 verse. His knowledge of Greek, though doubt- 
less such as was in his time thought respectable 
at Oxford, was evidently less than that which 
many lads now carry away every } T ear from Eton 
and Rugby. A minute examination of his works, 

10 if we had time to make such an examination, 
would fully bear out these remarks. We will 
briefly advert to a few of the facts on which our 
judgment is grounded. 

11. Great praise is due to the Notes which 

15 Addison appended to his version of the second 
and third books of the Metamorphoses. Yet 
those notes, while they show him to have been, 
in his own domain, an accomplished scholar, show 
also how confined that domain was. They are 

20 rich in apposite references to Virgil, Statius, and 
Claudian ; but they contain not a single illustra- 
tion drawn from the Greek poets. Now, if in 
the whole compass of Latin literature there be a 
passage which stands in need of illustration drawn 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 115 

from the Greek poets, it is the story of Pentheus in 
the third book of the Metamorphoses. Ovid was 
indebted for that story to Euripides and Theoc- 
ritus, both of whom he has sometimes followed 
minutely. But neither to Euripides nor to Theoc- 5 
ritus does Addison make the faintest allusion ; 
and we, therefore, believe that we do not wrong 
him by supposing that he had little or no knowl- 
edge of their works. 

12. His travels in Italy, again, abound with io 
classical quotations, happily introduced ; but 
scarcely one of those quotations is in prose. He 
draws more illustrations from Ausonius and Ma- 
nilius than from Cicero. Even his notions of the 
political and military affairs of the Romans seem 15 
to be derived from poets and poetasters. Spots 
made memorable by events which have changed 
the destinies of the world, and which have been 
worthily recorded by great historians, bring to 
his mind only scraps of some ancient versifier. 20 
In the gorge of the Apennines he naturally re- 
members the hardships which Hannibal's army 
endured, and proceeds to cite, not the authentic 
narrative of Polybius, not the picturesque narra- 



116 MAC AlJL AY'S ESSAYS. 

tive of Livy, but the languid hexameters of Silius 
Italicus. On the banks of the Rubicon he never 
thinks of Plutarch's lively description, or of the 
stern conciseness of the Commentaries, or of those 
5 letters to Atticus which so forcibly express the 
alternations of hope and fear in a sensitive mind 
at a great crisis. His only authority for the 
events of the civil war is Lucan. 

13. All the best ancient works of art at Rome 
10 and Florence are Greek. Addison saw them, 

however, without recalling one single verse of 
Pindar, of Callimachus, or of the Attic drama- 
tists ; but they brought to his recollection innu- 
merable passages of Horace, Juvenal, Statius, and 
15 Ovid. 

14. The same may be said of the Treatise on 
Medals. In that pleasing work we find about 
three hundred passages extracted with great judg- 
ment from the Roman poets ; but we do not recol- 

20 lect a single passage taken from any Roman 
orator or historian ; and we are confident that 
not a line is quoted from any Greek writer. No 
person, who had derived all his information on 
the subject of medals from Addison, would sus- 



THE LIFE A XI) WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 117 

pect that the Greek coins were in historical inter- 
est equal, and in beauty of execution far superior, 
to those of Rome. 

15. If it were necessary to find any further 
proof that Addison's classical knowledge was con- 5 
fined within narrow limits, that proof "would be 
furnished b} T his Essay on the Evidences of Chris- 
tianity. The Roman poets throw little or no light 
on the literary and historical questions which he 
is under the necessity of examining in that essay. 10 
He is, therefore, left completely in the dark ; 
and it is melancholy to see how helplessly he 
gropes his way from blunder to blunder. He 
assigns, as grounds for his religious belief, stories 
as absurd as that of the Cock-Lane ghost, and 15 
forgeries as rank as Ireland's Vortigern ; puts 
faith in the lie about the Thundering Legion ; 
is convinced that Tiberius moved the senate to 
admit Jesus among the gods ; and pronounces the 
letter of Agbarus, King of Edessa, to be a record 20 
of great authority. Nor were these errors the 
effects of superstition ; for to superstition Addison 
was by no means prone. The truth is, that he 
was writing about what he did not understand. 



118 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

16. Miss Aikin lias discovered a letter from 
which it appears that, while Addison resided at 
Oxford, he was one of several writers whom the 
booksellers engaged to make an English version 

5 of Herodotus ; and she infers that he must have 
been a good Greek scholar. We can allow very 
little weight to this argument, when we consider 
that his fellow-laborers were to have been Boyle 
and Blackmore. Boyle is remembered chiefly as 

10 the nominal author of the worst book on Greek 
history and philology that ever was printed ; and 
this book, bad as it is, Boyle was unable to pro- 
duce without help. Of Blackmore's attainments 
in the ancient tongues, it may be sufficient to say 

15 that, in his prose, he has confounded an aphorism 
with an apophthegm, and that when, in his verse, 
he treats of classical subjects, his habit is to regale 
his readers with four false quantities to a page. 

17. It is probable that the classical acquirements 
20 of Addison were of as much service to him as if 

they had been more extensive. The world gener- 
ally gives its admiration, not to the man who does 
Avhat nobody else even attempts to do, but to 
the man who does best what multitudes do well. 



THE LIFE AND WHITINGS OF ADDISON. 119 

Bentley was so immeasurely superior to all the 
other scholars of his time that few among them 
could discover his superiority. But the accom- 
plishment in which Addison excelled his contem- 
poraries was then, as it is now, highly valued and 5 
assiduously cultivated at all English seats of learn- 
ing. Everybody who had been at a public school 
had written Latin verses ; many had written such 
verses with tolerable success, and were quite able 
to appreciate, though by no means able to rival, 10 
the skill with which Addison imitated Virgil. His 
lines on the Barometer and the Bowling Green 
were applauded by hundreds, to whom the Disser- 
tation on the Epistles of Phalaris was as unintel- 
ligible as the hieroglyphics on an obelisk. 15 

18. Purity of style, and an easy flow of num- 
bers, are common to all Addison's Latin poems. 
Our favorite piece is the Battle of the Cranes and 
Pygmies ; for in that piece Ave discern a gleam of 
the fancy and humor which many years later 20 
enlivened thousands of breakfas>tables. Swift 
boasted that he Avas neA^er known to steal a hint ; 
and be certainly owed as little to his predecessors 
as any modern writer. Yet we cannot help sus- 



120 MA CAUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

pec ting that he borrowed, perhaps unconsciously, 
one of the happiest touches in his Voyage of Lil- 
liput from Addison's verses. Let our readers 
judge. 

5 19. "The Emperor," says Gulliver, "is taller by 
about the breadth of my nail than any of his court, 
which alone is enough to strike an awe into the 
beholders." 

20. About thirty years before Gulliver's Travels 

10 appeared, Addison wrote these lines : — 

" Jamque acies inter medias sese ardims infert 
Pygmeadum ductor, qui, majestate verendus, 
Iucessuque gravis, reliquos supereminet omnes 
Mole gigantea, mediamque exsurgit in ulnam." 

15 21. The Latin poems of Addison were greatly 
and justly admired both at Oxford and Cambridge, 
before his name had ever been heard by the wits 
who thronged the coffee-houses round Drury-Lane 
Theatre. In his twenty-second year he ventured 

20 to appear before the public as a. writer of English 
verse. He addressed some complimentary lines to 
Dryden, who, after many triumphs and many re- 
verses, had at length reached a secure and lonely 
eminence among the literary men of that age. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 121 

Dry den appears to have been much gratified by 
the young scholar's praise ; and an interchange of 
civilities and good offices followed. Addison was 
probably introduced by Dryden to Congreve, and 
was certainly presented by Congreve to Charles 5 
Montague, who was then Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer, and leader of the Whig party in the 
House of Commons. 

22. At this time Addison seemed inclined to 
devote himself to poetry. He published a trans- 10 
lation of part of the fourth Georgic, Lines to King 
William, and other performances of equal value ; 
that is to say, of no value at all. But in those 
days, the public was in the habit of receiving with 
applause pieces which would now have little 15 
chance of obtaining the Newdigate prize or the 
Seatonian prize. And the reason is obvious. The 
heroic couplet was then the favorite measure. 
The art of arranging words in that measure, so 
that the lines may flow smoothly, that the accents 20 
may fall correctly, that the rhymes may strike the 
ear strongly, and that there may be a pause at the 
end of every distich, is an art as mechanical as 
that of mending a kettle or shoeing a horse, and 



122 MAC AULA Y'S ESSAYS. 

may be learned by any human being who has sense 
enough to learn anything. But, like other me- 
chanical arts, it was gradually improved by means 
of many experiments and many failures. It was 

5 reserved for Pope to discover the trick, to make 
himself complete master of it, and to teach it to 
everybody else. From the time when his Pastorals 
appeared, heroic versification became matter of 
rule and compass ; and, before long, all artists 

10 were on a level. Hundreds of dunces who never 
blundered on one happy thought or expression 
were able to write reams of couplets which, as far 
as euphony was concerned, could not be distin- 
guished from those of Pope himself, and which 

15 very clever writers of the reign of Charles the 
Second, — Rochester, for example, or Marvel, or 
Oldham, — would have contemplated with admir- 
ing despair. 

23. Ben Jonson was a great man, Hoole a very 

20 small man. But Hoole, coming after Pope, had 
learned how to manufacture decasyllable verses, 
and poured them forth by thousands and tens of 
thousands, all as well turned, as smooth, and as 
like each other as the blocks which have passed 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 123 

through Mr. Brunei's mill in the dockyard at 
Portsmouth. Ben's heroic couplets resemble blocks 
rudely hewn out by an unpractised hand with a 
blunt hatchet. Take as a specimen his translation 
of a celebrated passage in the JEneid : — 5 

; - This child our parent earth, stirred up with spite 
Of all the gods, brought forth, and, as some write, 
She was last sister of that giant race 
That sought to scale Jove's court, right swift of pace, 
And swifter far of wing, a monster vast 10 

And dreadful. Look, how many plumes are placed 
On her huge corpse, so many waking eyes 
Slick underneath, and, which may stranger rise 
In the report, as many tongues she wears. 1 ' 

24. Compare with these jagged misshapen dis- 15 
fcichs the neat fabric which Hoole's machine pro- 
duces in unlimited abundance. We take the 
first lines on which we open in his version of 
Tasso. They are neither better nor Avorse than 
the rest : — 20 

" thou, whoe'er thou art, whose steps are led, 
By choice or fate, these lonely shores to tread, 
No greater wonders east or west can boast 
Than yon small island on the pleasing coast. 
If e'er thy sight would blissful scenes explore, 25 

The current pass, and seek the further shore." 



124 MACAULAY\S ESSAYS. 

25. Ever since the time of Pope there has been a 
glut of lines of this sort ; and we are now as little 
disposed to admire a man for being able to write 
them, as for being able to write his name. But 

5 in the days of William the Third such versifica- 
tion was rare ; and a rhymer who had any skill in 
it passed for a great poet, just as in the dark ages 
a person who could write his name passed for a 
great clerk. Accordingly, Duke, Stepney, Gran- 

10 ville, Walsh, and others whose only title to fame 
was that they said in tolerable metre what might 
have been as well said in prose, or what was not 
worth saying at all, were honored with marks of 
distinction which ought to be reserved for genius. 

15 With these Addison must have ranked, if he had 
not earned true and lasting glory by performances 
which very little resembled his juvenile poems. 

26. Dryden was now busied with Virgil, and 
obtained from Addison a critical preface to the 

20 Georgics. In return for this service, and for 
other services of the same kind, the veteran poet, 
in the postscript to the translation of the ^Eneid, 
complimented his young friend with great liber- 
ality, and indeed with more liberality than sin- 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 125 

cerity. He affected to be afraid that his own 
performance would not sustain a comparison with 
the version of the fourth Georgic, by "the most 
ingenious Mr. Addison of Oxford." " After his 
bees," added Dryden, " my latter swarm is scarcely 5 
worth the hiving." 

27. The time had now arrived when it was 
necessary for Addison to choose a calling. Every- 
thing seemed to point his course towards the cler- 
ical profession. His habits were regular, his 10 
opinions orthodox. His college had large eccle- 
siastical preferment in its gift, and boasts that it 
has given at least one bishop to almost every see 
in England. Dr. Lancelot Addison held an hon- 
orable place in the church, and had set his heart 15 
on seeing his son a clergyman. It is clear, from 
some expressions in the young man's rhymes, that 
his intention was to take orders. But Charles 
Montague interfered. Montague had first brought 
himself into notice by verses, well-timed and not 20 
contemptibly written, but never, we think, rising 
above mediocrity. Fortunately for himself and 
for his country, he early quitted poetry, in which 
he could never have attained a rank as high as 



126 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

that of Dorset or Rochester, and turned his mind 
to official and parliamentary business. It is 
written that the ingenious person who undertook 
to instruct Rasselas, prince of Abyssinia, in the 

5 art of flying, ascended an eminence, waved his 
wings, sprang into the air, and instantly dropped 
into the lake. But it is added that the wings, 
which were unable to support him through the 
sky, bore him up effectually as soon as he was in 

10 the water. This is no bad type of the fate of 
Charles Montague, and of men like him. When 
he attempted to soar into the regions of poetical 
invention, he altogether failed ; but, as soon as he 
had descended from that ethereal elevation into a 

15 lower and grosser element, his talents instantly 
raised him above the mass. He became a dis- 
tinguished financier, debater, courtier, and party 
leader. He still retained his fondness for the 
pursuits of his early days ; but he showed that 

20 fondness not by wearying the public with his own 
feeble performances, but by discovering and en- 
couraging literary excellence in others. A crowd 
of wits and poets, who would easily have van- 
quished him as a competitor, revered him as a 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 127 

judge and a patron. In his plans for the encour- 
agement of learning, he was cordially supported 
by the ablest and most virtuous of his colleagues, 
the Lord Chancellor Somers. Though both these 
great statesmen had a sincere love of letters, it 5 
was not solely from a love of letters that they 
were desirous to enlist youths of high intellectual 
qualifications in the public service. The Revolu- 
tion had altered the whole system of government. 
Before that event the press had been controlled by 10 
censors, and the parliament had sat only two 
months in eight years. Now the press was free, 
and had begun to exercise unprecedented influ- 
ence on the public mind. Parliament met annu- 
ally, and sat long. The chief power in the state 15 
had passed to the House of Commons. At such 
a conjuncture, it was natural that literary and 
oratorical talents should rise in value. There was 
danger that a government which neglected such 
talents might be subverted by them. It was, 20 
therefore, a profound and enlightened policy 
wliich led Montague and Somers to attach such 
talents to the Whig party, by the strongest ties 
both of interest and of gratitude. 



128 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

28. It is remarkable that, in a neighboring 
country, we have recently seen similar effects 
follow from similar causes. The Revolution of 
July 1830 established representative government 

5 in France. The men of letters instantly rose to 
the highest importance in the state. At the pres- 
ent moment most of the persons whom we see at 
the head both of the Administration and of the 
Opposition, have been professors, historians, jour- 

10 nalists, poets. The influence of the literary class 
in England, during the generation which followed 
the Revolution, was great, but by no means so 
great as it has lately been in France. For, in 
England, the aristocracy of intellect had to con- 

15 tend with a powerful and deeply rooted aristocracy 
of a very different kind. France had no Somersets 
and Shrewsburys to keep down her Addisons 
and Priors. 

29. It was in the year 1699, when Addison had 
20 just completed his twenty-seventh year, that the 

course of his life was finally determined. Both 
the great chiefs of the Ministry were kindly dis- 
posed towards him. In political opinions he 
already was, what he continued to be through life, 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 129 

a firm, though a moderate Whig. He had ad- 
dressed the most polished and vigorous of his 
early English lines to Somers, and had dedicated 
to Montague a Latin poem, truly Virgilian, both 
in style and rhythm, on the peace of Ryswick. 5 
The wish of the young poet's great friends was, it 
should seem, to employ him in the service of the 
crown abroad. But an intimate knowledge of the 
French language was a qualification indispensable 
to a diplomatist ; and this qualification Addison 10 
had not acquired. It was, therefore, thought de- 
sirable that he should pass some time on the 
Continent in preparing himself for official employ- 
ment. His own means Avere not such as would 
enable him to travel ; but a pension of three 15 
hundred pounds a year was procured for him by 
the interest of the Lord Chancellor. It seems to 
have been apprehended that some difficulty might 
be started by the rulers of Magdalene College. 
But the Chancellor of the Exchequer wrote in the 20 
strongest terms to Hough. The state — such was 
the purport of Montague's letter — could not, at 
that time, spare to the church such a man as 
Addison. Too many high civil posts were already 



130 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

occupied by adventurers, who, destitute of every 
liberal art and sentiment, at once pillaged and dis- 
graced the country which they pretended to serve. 
It had become necessary to recruit for the public 

5 service from a very different class, from that class 
of which Addison was the representative. The 
close of the Minister's letter was remarkable. " I 
am called," he said, " an enemy of the church. But 
I will never do it any other injury than keeping 

10 Mr. Addison out of it." 

30. This interference was successful ; and, in 
the summer of 1699, Addison, made a rich man by 
his pension, and still retaining his fellowship, 
quitted his beloved Oxford, and set out on his 

15 travels. He crossed from Dover to Calais, pro- 
ceeded to Paris, and was received there with great 
kindness and politeness by a kinsman of his friend 
Montague, Charles Earl of Manchester, who had 
just been appointed Ambassador to the Court of 

20 France. The Countess, a Whig and a toast, was 
probably as gracious as her lord ; for Addison long 
retained an agreeable recollection of the impression 
which she at this time made on him, and, in some 
lively lines written on the glasses of the Kit Cat 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 131 

Club, described the envy which her cheeks, glow- 
ing with the genuine bloom of England, had 
excited among the painted beauties of Versailles. 

31. Louis the Fourteenth was at this time 
expiating the vices of his youth by a devotion 5 
which had no root in reason, and bore no fruit of 
charity. The servile literature of France had 
changed its character to suit the changed character 
of the prince. No book appeared that had not an 
air of sanctity. Racine, who was just dead, had 10 
passed the close of his life in writing sacred dramas ; 
and Dacier was seeking for the Athanasian mys- 
teries in Plato. Addison described this state of 
things in a short but lively and graceful letter to 
Montague. Another letter, written about the 15 
same time to the Lord Chancellor, conveyed the 
strongest assurances of gratitude and attachment. 
" The only return I can make to your Lordship," 
said Addison, " will be to apply myself entirely to 
my business." With this view he quitted Paris 20 
and repaired to Blois, a place where it was sup- 
posed that the French language was spoken in its 
highest purity, and where not a single Englishman 
could be found. Here he passed some months 



132 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

pleasantly and profitably. Of his way of life at 
Blois, one of his associates, an abbe named Philip- 
peaux, gave an account to Joseph Spence. If this 
account is to be trusted, Addison studied much, 

5 mused much, talked little, had fits of absence, and 
either had no love affairs, or was too discreet to 
confide them to the abbe. A man who, even when 
surrounded b} T fellow-countrymen and fellow- 
students, had always been remarkably shy and 

10 silent, was not likely to be loquacious in a foreign 
tongue, and among foreign companions. But it is 
clear from Addison's letters, some of which were 
long after published in the Guardian, that, while 
he appeared to be absorbed in his own meditations, 

15 he was really observing French society with that 
keen and sly, yet not ill-natured side-glance, which 
was peculiarly his own. 

32. From Blois he returned to Paris ; and, 
having now mastered the French language, found 

20 great pleasure in the society of French philoso- 
phers and poets. He gave an account in a letter 
to Bishop Hough, of two highly interesting con- 
versations, one with Malebranche, the other with 
Boileau. Malebranche expressed great partiality 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 133 

for the English, and extolled the genius of New- 
ton, but shook his head when Hobbes was men- 
tioned, and was indeed so unjust as to call the 
author of the Leviathan a poor silly creature. 
Addison's modesty restrained him from fully re- 5 
lating, in his letter, the circumstances of his intro- 
duction to Boileau. Boileau, having survived the 
friends and rivals of his youth, old, deaf, and 
melancholy, lived in retirement, seldom went 
either to Court or to the Academy, and was 10 
almost inaccessible to strangers. Of the English 
and of English literature he knew nothing. He 
had hardly heard the name of Dryden. Some of 
our countrymen, in the warmth of their patriotism, 
have asserted that this ignorance must have been 15 
affected. We own that we see no ground for such 
a supposition. English literature was to the 
French of the age of Louis the Fourteenth what 
German literature was to our own grandfathers. 
Very few, we suspect, of the accomplished men 20 
who, sixty or seventy years ago, used to dine in 
Leicester Square with Sir Joshua, or at Streatham 
with Mrs. Thrale, had the slightest notion that 
Wieland was one of the first wits and poets, and 



134 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

Lessing, beyond all dispute, the first critic in 
Europe. Boileau knew just as little about the 
Paradise Lost and about Absalom and Achitophel; 
but he had read Addison's Latin poems, and ad- 

5 mired them greatly. They had given him, he 
said, quite a new notion of the state of learning 
and taste among the English. Johnson will have 
it that these praises were insincere. " Nothing," 
says he, " is better known of Boileau than that he 

10 had an injudicious and peevish contempt of modern 
Latin ; and therefore his profession of regard was 
probably the effect of his civility rather than ap- 
probation." Now, nothing is better known of 
Boileau than that he was singularly sparing of 

15 compliments. We do not remember that either 
friendship or fear ever induced him to bestow 
praise on any composition which he did not ap- 
prove. On literary questions, his caustic, disdain- 
ful, and self-confident spirit rebelled against that 

20 authority to which everything else in France 
bowed doAvn. He had the spirit to tell Louis the 
Fourteenth firmly and even rudely, that his ma- 
jesty knew nothing about poetry, and admired 
verses which were detestable. What was there in 



THE LIFE AND WHITINGS OF ADDISON. 135 

Addison's position that could induce the satirist, 
whose stern and fastidious temper had been the 
dread of two generations, to turn sycophant for the 
first and last time ? Nor was Boileau's contempt 
of modern Latin either injudicious or peevish. 5 
He thought, indeed, that no poem of the first 
order would ever be written in a dead language. 
And did he think amiss? Has not the experience 
of centuries confirmed his opinion? Boileau also 
thought it probable that, in the best modern Latin, 10 
a writer of the Augustan age would have detected 
ludicrous improprieties. And who can think 
otherwise? What modern scholar can honestly 
declare that he sees the smallest impurity in the 
style of Livy ? Yet is it not certain that, in the 15 
style of Livy, Pollio, whose taste had been formed 
on the banks of the Tiber, detected the inelegant 
idiom of the Po? Has any modern scholar un- 
derstood Latin better than Frederic the Great 
understood French ? Yet is it not notorious that 20 
Frederic the Great, after reading, speaking, writing 
French, and nothing but French, during more 
than half a century, after unlearning his mother 
tongue in order to learn French, after living 



136 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

familiarly during many years with French asso- 
ciates, could not, to the last, compose in French, 
without imminent risk of committing some mistake 
which would have moved a smile in the literary 
5 circles of Paris? Do we believe that Erasmus 
and Fracastorius wrote Latin as well as Dr. Rob- 
ertson and Sir Walter Scott wrote English ? And 
are there not in the Dissertation on India, the last 
of Dr. Robertson's works, in Waverley, in Mar- 
io mion, Scotticisms at which a London apprentice 
would laugh ? But does it follow, because we 
think thus, that we can find nothing to admire 
in the noble alcaics of Gray, or in the playful 
elegiacs of Vincent Bourne ? Surely not. Nor 
15 was Boileau so ignorant or tasteless as to be 
incapable of appreciating good modern Latin. In 
the very letter to which Johnson alludes, Boileau 
says, " Ne croyez pas pourtant que je veuille par 
la blame r les vers Latins que vous m'avez envoyes 
20 d'un de vos illustres academiciens. Je les ai 
trouves fort beaux, et dignes de Vida et de San- 
nazar, mais non pas d' Horace et de Virgile." 
Several poems in modern Latin have been praised 
by Boileau quite as liberally as it was his habit to 



TIIK LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 137 

praise anything. He says, for example, of the 
Pere Fraguier's epigrams, that Catullus seems to 
have come to life again. But the best proof that 
Boileau did not feel the undiscerning contempt for 

modern Latin verses which has been imputed to 5 
him, is that he wrote and published Latin verses 
in several metres. Indeed, it happens, curiously 
enough, that the most severe censure ever pro- 
nounced by him on modern Latin is conveyed in 
Latin hexameters. We allude to the fragment 10 
which begins : — 

•' Quid numeris iterum me balbutire Latinis, 
Longe Alpes citra natum de patre Sicambro, 
Musa, jubes ? " 

33. For these reasons we feel assured that the 15 
praise which Boileau bestowed on the Machince 
Grestictdantes, and the G-erario-Pygrnceomachia, was 
sincere. He certainly opened himself to Addison 
with a freedom which was a sure indication of 
esteem. Literature was the chief subject of con- 20 
versation. The old man talked on his favorite 
theme much and well, — indeed, as his young 
hearer thought, incomparably well. Boileau had 
undoubtedly some of the qualities of a great critic. 



138 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

He wanted imagination ; but he had strong sense. 
His literary code was formed on narrow principles ; 
but in applying it he showed great judgment and 
penetration. In mere style, abstracted from the 

5 ideas of which style is the garb, his taste was 
excellent. He Avas well acquainted with the great 
Greek writers, and, though unable fully to appre- 
ciate their creative genius, admired the majestic 
simplicity of their manner, and had learned from 

10 them to despise bombast and tinsel. It is easy, we 
think, to discover in the Spectator and the Guard- 
ian traces of the influence, in part salutary and in 
part pernicious, which the mind of Boileau had 
on the mind of Addison. 

15 34. While Addison was at Paris, an event took 
place which made that capital a disagreeable resi- 
dence for an Englishman and a Whig. Charles, 
second of the name, king of Spain, died, and be- 
queathed his dominions to Philip, Duke of Anjou, 

20 a younger son of the Dauphin. The King of 
France, in direct violation of his engagements, 
both with Great Britain and with the States, 
General, accepted the bequest on behalf of his 
grandson. The house of Bourbon was at the sum- 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 139 

mit of human grandeur. England had been out- 
witted, and found herself in a situation at once 
degrading and perilous. The people of France, 
not presaging the calamities by which they were 
destined to expiate the perfidy of their sovereign, 5 
went mad with pride and delight. Every man 
looked as if a great estate had just been left him. 
" The French conversation," said Addison, " begins 
to grow insupportable ; that which was before the 
vainest nation in the world, is now worse than 10 
ever." Sick of the arrogant exultation of the 
Parisians, and probably foreseeing that the peace 
between France and England could not be of long 
duration, he set off for Italy. 

35. In December, 1700, 1 he embarked at Mar- 15 
seilles. As he glided along the Ligurian coast, he 
was delighted by the sight of myrtles and olive- 
trees, which retained their verdure under the win- 
ter solstice. Soon, however, he encountered one 

1 It is strange that Addison should in the first line of his 
travels have misdated his departure from Marseilles by a whole 
year, and still more strange that this slip of the pen, which 
throws the whole narrative into confusion, should have been 
repeated in a succession of editions, and never detected by 
Tickell or Hurd. (Macaulay's Note.) 



140 MAC A UL AY'S ESSAYS. 

of the black storms of the Mediterranean. The 
captain of the ship gave up all for lost, and con- 
fessed himself to a capuchin who happened to be 
on board. The English heretic, in the meantime, 

5 fortified himself against the terrors of death with 
devotions of a very different kind. How strong 
an impression this perilous voyage made on him 
appears from the ode, " How are thy servants 
blest, O Lord ! " which was long after published 

10 in the Spectator. After some days of discomfort 
and danger, Addison was glad to land at Savona, 
and to make his way, over mountains where no 
road had yet been hewn out by art, to the city of 
Genoa. 

15 36. At Genoa, still ruled by her own doge, and 
by the nobles whose names were inscribed on her 
Book of Gold, Addison made a short stay. He 
admired the narrow streets overhung by long lines 
of towering palaces, the walls rich with frescoes, 

20 the gorgeous temple of the Annunciation, and the 
tapestries whereon were recorded the long glories 
of the house of Doria. Thence he hastened to 
Milan, where he contemplated the Gothic magnifi- 
cence of the cathedral with more wonder than 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON, 111 

pleasure. He passed Lake Benacus while a gale 
was blowing, and saw the waves raging as they 
raged when Virgil looked upon them. At Venice, 
then the gayest spot in Europe, the traveller spent 
the Carnival, the gayest season of the year, in the 5 
midst of masks, dances, and serenades. Here he 
was at once diverted and provoked by the absurd 
dramatic pieces which then disgraced the Italian 
stage. To one of those pieces, however, he was 
indebted for a valuable hint, He was present 10 
when a ridiculous play on the death of Cato was 
performed. Cato, it seems, was in love with a 
daughter of Scipio. The lady had given her heart 
to Caesar. The rejected lover determined to de- 
stroy himself. He appeared seated in his library, a 15 
dagger in his hand, a Plutarch and a Tasso before 
him ; and, in this position, he pronounced a solilo- 
quy before he struck the blow. We are surprised 
that so remarkable a circumstance as this should 
have escaped the notice of all Addison's biogra- 20 
phers. There cannot, we conceive, be the smallest 
doubt that this scene, in spite of its absurdities 
and anachronisms, struck the traveller's imagina- 
tion, and suggested to him the thought of bringing 



142 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

Cato on the English stage. It is well known that 
about this time he began his tragedy, and that he 
finished the first four acts before he returned to 
England. 

5 37. On his way from Venice to Rome, he was 
drawn some miles out of the beaten road by a wish 
to see the smallest independent state in Europe. 
On a rock where the snow still lay, though the 
Italian spring was now far advanced, was perched 

10 the little fortress of San Marino. The roads which 
led to the secluded town were so bad that few 
travellers had ever visited it, and none had ever 
published an account of it. Addison could not 
suppress a good-natured smile at the simple man- 

15 uers and institutions of this singular community. 
But he observed, with the exultation of a Whig, 
that the rude mountain tract which formed the 
territory of the republic swarmed with an honest, 
healthy, and contented peasantry, while the rich 

20 plain which surrounded the metropolis of civil and 
spiritual tyranny was scarcely less desolate than 
the uncleared wilds of America. 

38. At Rome Addison remained on his first visit 
only long enough to catch a glimpse of St. Peter's 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 14o 

and of the Pantheon. His haste is the more ex- 
traordinary because the Holy Week was close at 
hand. He has given no hint which can enable us 
to pronounce why he chose to fly from a spectacle 
which every year allures from distant regions per- 5 
sons of far less taste and sensibility than his. 
Possibly, travelling, as he did, at the charge of 
a government distinguished by its enmity to the 
Church of Rome, he may have thought that it 
would be imprudent in him to assist at the most 10 
magnificent rite of that church. Many eves would 
be upon him, and he might find it difficult to be- 
have in such a manner as to give offence neither 
to his patrons in England, nor to those among 
whom he resided. Whatever his motives may 15 
have been, he turned his back 011 the most august 
and affecting ceremony which is known among 
men, and posted along the Appian way to Naples. 
39. Naples was then destitute of what are now, 
perhaps, its chief attractions. The lovely bay and 20 
the awful mountain were indeed there ; but a 
farm-house stood on the theatre of Herculaneum, 
and rows of vines grew over the streets of Pom- 
peii. The temples of Pa3stum had not indeed been 



144 MAGAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

hidden from the eye of man by any great convul- 
sion of nature ; but, strange to say, their existence 
was a secret even to artists and antiquaries. 
Though situated within a few hours' journey 

5 of a great capital, where Salvator had not long 
before painted, and where Vico was then lectur- 
ing, those noble remains were as little known to 
Europe as the ruined cities overgrown by the 
forests of Yucatan. What was to be seen at 

10 Naples Addison saw. He climbed Vesuvius, ex- 
plored the tunnel of Posilipo, and wandered 
among the vines and almond-trees of Caprea?. 
But neither the wonders of nature, nor those of 
art, could so occupy his attention as to prevent 

15 him from noticing, though cursorily, the abuses of 
the government and the misery of the people. 
The great kingdom which had just descended to 
Philip the Fifth, was in a state of paralytic do- 
tage. Even Castile and Aragon ivere sunk in 

20 wretchedness. Yet, compared with the Italian 
dependencies of the Spanish crown, Castile and 
Aragon might be called prosperous. It is clear 
that all the observations which Addison made in 
Italy tended to confirm him in the political 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 145 

opinions which he had adopted at home. To 
the last he always spoke of foreign travel as 
the best cure for Jacobitism. In his Free- 
holder the Tory fox-hunter asks what travelling 
is good for, except to teach a man to jabber French 5 
and to talk against passive obedience. 

40. From Naples, Addison returned to Rome 
by sea, along the coast which his favorite Virgil 
had celebrated. The felucca passed the head- 
land where the oar and trumpet were placed by 10 
the Trojan adventurers on the tomb of Misenus, 
and anchored at night under the shelter of the 
fabled promontory of Circe. The voyage ended 
in the Tiber, still overhung with dark verdure, 
and still turbid with yellow sand, as when it met 15 
the eyes of iEneas. From the ruined port of 
Ostia, the stranger hurrried to Rome ; and at 
Rome he remained during those hot and sickly 
months, when, even in the Augustan age, all who 
could make their escape fled from mad dogs and 20 
from streets black with funerals, to gather the first 
figs of the season in the country. It is probable 
that, when he, long after, poured forth in verse 
his tiratitude to the Providence which had en- 



14(] MAC AULA Y\S ESSAYS. 

abled him to breathe unhurt in tainted air, he was 
thinking of the August and September which he 
passed at Rome. 

41. It was not till the latter end of October 

5 that he tore himself away from the masterpieces 
of ancient and modern art which are collected in 
the city, so long the mistress of the world. He 
then journeyed northward, passed through Sienna, 
and for a moment forgot Jus prejudices in favor 

10 of classic architecture as lie looked on the magnif- 
icent cathedral. At Florence he spent some days 
with the Duke of Shrewsbury, who, cloyed with 
the pleasures of ambition, and impatient of its 
pains, fearing both parties, and loving neither, 

15 had determined to hide in an Italian retreat tal- 
ents and accomplishments which, if they had been 
united with fixed principles and civil courage, 
might have made him the foremost man of his 
age. These days, we are told, passed pleasantly ; 

20 and we can easily believe it. For Addison was a 
delightful companion when he was at his ease ; 
and the duke, though he seldom forgot that he 
was a Talbot, had the invaluable art of putting 
at ease all who came near him. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 147 

42. Addison gave some time to Florence, and 
especially to the sculptures in the Museum, which 
he preferred even to those of the Vatican. He 
then pursued his journey through a country in 
which the ravages of the last war were still dis- 5 
cernible, and in which all men were looking for- 
ward with dread to a still fiercer conflict. Eugene 
had already descended' from the Rhaetian Alps, to 
dispute with Catinat, the rich plain of Lombardy. 
The faithless ruler of Savoy was still reckoned 10 
among the allies of Louis. England had not yet 
actually declared war against France : but Man- 
chester had left Paris ; and the negotiations which 
produced the Grand Alliance against the house of 
Bourbon were in progress. Under such circum- 15 
stances, it was desirable for an English traveller 
to reach neutral ground without delay. Addison 
resolved to cross Mont Cenis. It was December ; 
and the road was very different from that which 
now reminds the stranger of the power and genius 20 
of Napoleon. The winter, however, was mild ; 
and the passage was, for those times, easy. To 
this journey Addison alluded, when in the ode 
which we have already quoted, he said that for 



148 MACAU LAY'S ESSAYS. 

him the Divine goodness had warmed the hoary 
Alpine hills. 

43. It was in the midst of the eternal snow 
that he composed his Epistle to his friend Monta- 

5 gne, now Lord Halifax. That Epistle, once 
widely renowned, is now known only to cu- 
rious readers, and will hardly be considered by 
those to whom it is known as in any perceptible 
degree heightening Addison's fame. It is, how- 

10 ever, decidedly superior to any English composi- 
tion which he had previously published. Nay, 
we think it quite as good as any poem in heroic 
metre which appeared during the interval between 
the death of Dryden and the publication of the 

15 Essay on Criticism. It contains passages as good 
as the second-rate passages of Pope, and would 
have added to the reputation of Parnell or Prior. 

44. But, whatever be the literary merits or de- 
fects of the Epistle, it undoubtedly does honor to 

20 the principles and spirit of the author. Halifax 
had now nothing to give. He had fallen from 
power, had been held up to obloquy, had been im- 
peached by the House of Commons, and, though 
his peers had dismissed the impeachment, had, as 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 149 

it seemed, little chance of ever again filling high 

office. The Epistle, written at such a time, is one 
among many proofs that there was no mixture of 
cowardice or meanness in the suavity and modera- 
tion which distinguished Addison from all the 5 
other public men of those stormy times. 

45. At Geneva, the traveller learned that a 
partial change of ministry had taken place in 
England, and that the Earl of Manchester had 
become Secretary of State. Manchester exerted 10 
himself to serve his young friend. It was thought 
advisable that an English agent should be near 
the person of Eugene in Italy ; and Addison, 
whose diplomatic education Avas now finished, was 
the man selected. He was preparing to enter on 15 
his honorable functions, when all his prospects 
were for a time darkened by the death of William 
the Third. 

46. Anne had long felt a strong aversion, per- 
sonal, political, and religious, to the Whig party. 20 
That aversion appeared in the first measures of 
her reign. Manchester was deprived of the seals, 
after he had held them only a few weeks. Neither 
Somers nor Halifax was sworn of the Privy Coun- 



150 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

cil. Addison shared the fate of his three patrons. 
His hopes of employment in the public service 
were at an end ; his pension was stopped ; and it 
was necessary for him to support himself by his 

5 own exertions. He became tutor to a young Eng- 
lish traveller, and appears to have rambled with 
his pupil over a great part of Switzerland and Ger- 
many. At this time he wrote his pleasing treatise 
on Medals. It was not published till after his 

10 death ; but several distinguished scholars saw the 
manuscript, and gave just praise to the grace of 
the style, and to the learning and ingenuity 
evinced by the quotations. 

47. From Germany, Addison repaired to Hol- 
15 land, where he learned the melancholy news of 

his father's death. After passing some months in 
the United Provinces, he returned about the close 
of the year 1703 to England. He was there 
cordially received by his friends, and introduced 
20 by them into the Kit Cat Club, a society in which 
were collected all the various talents and accom- 
plishments which then gave lustre to the Whig 
party. 

48. Addison was, during some months after his 



THE LIFE AND WHITINGS OF ADDISON. 151 

return from the Continent, hard pressed by pecu- 
niary difficulties. But it was soon in the power 
of his noble patrons to serve him effectually. A 
political change, silent and gradual, but of the 
highest importance, was in daily progress. The "> 
accession of Anne had been hailed by the Tories 
with transports of joy and hope ; and for a time it 
seemed that the Whigs had fallen never to rise 
again. The throne was surrounded by men sup- 
posed to be attached to the prerogative and to the 10 
church ; and among these none stood so high in 
the favor of the sovereign as the Lord-Treasurer 
Godolphin and the Captain-General Marlborough. 

49. The country gentlemen and country clergy- 
men had fully expected that the policy of these 15 
ministers would be directly opposed to that which 
had been almost constantly followed by William ; 
that the landed interest would be favored at the 
expense of trade ; that no additions would be 
made to the funded debt ; that the privileges con- 2<> 
ceded to Dissenters by the late king would be 
curtailed, if not withdrawn; that the war with 
France, if there must be such a war, would, on 
our part, be almost entirely naval; and that the 



152 MACAULAT'S ESSAYS. 

government would avoid close connections with 
foreign powers, and, above all, with Holland. 

50. But the country gentlemen and country 
clergymen were fated to be deceived, not for the 
last time. The prejudices and passions which 

• r > raged without control in vicarages, in cathedral 
closes, and in the manor-houses of fox-hunting 
squires, were not shared by the chiefs of the 
ministry. Those statesmen saw that it was both 
for the public interest, and for their own interest, 

10 to adopt a Whig policy, at least as respected the 
alliances of the country and the conduct of the 
war. But, if the foreign policy of the Whigs 
were adopted, it was impossible to abstain from 
adopting also their financial policy. The natural 

15 consequences followed. The rigid Tories were 
alienated from the government. The votes of the 
Whigs became necessary to it. The votes of 
the Whigs could be secured only by further con- 
cessions ; and further concessions the Queen was 

20 induced to make. 

51. At the beginning of the year 1704, the 
state of parties bore a close analogy to the state 
if parties in 182(3. In 1826, as in 1704, there 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 153 

was a Tory ministry divided into two hostile sec- 
tions. The position of Mr. Canning and his 
friends in 1826 corresponded to that which Marl- 
borough and Grodolphin occupied in 1704. Not- 
tingham and Jersey were in 1704 what Lord 5 
Eldon and Lord Westmoreland were in 1826. 
The Whigs of 1704 were in a situation resembling 
that in which the Whigs of 1826 stood. In 1704, 
Somers, Halifax, Sunderland, Cowper, were not in 
office. There was no avowed coalition between 10 
them and the moderate Tories. It is probable 
that no direct communication tending to such a 
coalition had yet taken place ; yet all men saw 
that such a coalition was inevitable, nay, that it 
was already half formed. Such, or nearly such, 15 
was the state of things when tidings arrived of the 
great battle fought at Blenheim on the 13th 
August, 1704. By the Whigs the news was 
hailed with transports of joy and pride. No fault. 
no cause of quarrel, could be remembered by them 20 
aerainst the commander whose ofenius had, in one 
day, changed the face of Europe, saved the Im- 
perial throne, humbled the house of Bourbon, and 
secured the Act of Settlement against foreign 



154 MA (J A ULA Y ' 8 ESS A YS. 

hostility. The feeling of the Tories was very 
different. They could not indeed, without im- 
prudence, openly express regret at an event so 
glorious to their country ; but their congratula- 

5 tions were so cold and sullen as to give deep dis- 
gust to the victorious general and his friends. 

52. Godolphin was not a reading man. What- 
ever time he could spare from business he was in 
the habit of spending at Newmarket or at the 

10 card-table. But he was not absolutely indifferent 
to poetry; and he was too intelligent an observer 
not to perceive that literature was a formidable 
engine of political warfare, and that the great 
Whig leaders had strengthened their party and 

15 raised their character by extending a liberal and 
judicious patronage to good writers. He was 
mortified, and not without reason, by the exceed- 
ing badness of the poems which appeared in honor 
of the battle of Blenheim. One of those poems 

20 has been rescued from oblivion by the exquisite 
absurdity of three lines : — 

"Think of two thousand gentlemen at least, 
And each man mounted on his capering beast; 
Into the Danube they were pushed by shoals." 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 155 

53. Where to procure better verses the treas- 
urer did not know. He understood how to nego- 
tiate a loan, or remit a subsidy ; he was also well 
versed in the history of running horses and fight- 
ing cocks ; but his acquaintance among the poets 5 
was very small. He consulted Halifax ; but Hal- 
ifax affected to decline the office of adviser. He 
had, he said, done his best, when he had power, to 
encourage men whose abilities and acquirements 
might do honor to their country. Those times 10 
were over. Other maxims had prevailed. Merit 
was suffered to pine in obscurity ; and the public 
money was squandered on the undeserving. " I 
do know," he added, " a gentleman who would 
celebrate the battle in a manner worthy of the 15 
subject, but I will not name him." Godolphin, 
who was an expert at the soft answer which 
turneth away wrath, and who was under the 
necessity of paying court to the Whigs, gently 
replied that there was too much ground for Hali- 20 
fax's complaints, but that what was amiss should 
in time be rectified, and that in the meantime the 
services of a man such as Halifax had described 
should be liberally rewarded. Halifax then men- 



156 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

tioned Addison ; but, mindful of the dignity as 
well as of the pecuniary interest of his friend, 
insisted that the minister should apply in the 
most courteous manner to Addison himself; and 

5 this Godolphin promised to do. 

54. Addison then occupied a garret up three 
pair of stairs, over a small shop in the Haymarket. 
In this humble lodging lie was surprised, on the 
morning which followed the conversation between 

10 Godolphin and Halifax, by a visit from no less a 
person than the Right Honorable Henry Boyle, 
then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and afterwards 
Lord Carleton. This high-born minister had been 
sent by the Lord-Treasurer as ambassador to the 

15 needy poet. Addison readily undertook the pro- 
posed task, a task which, to so good a Whig, was 
probably a pleasure. When the poem was little 
more than half finished, lie showed it to Godol- 
phin, who was delighted with it, and particularly 

20 with the famous similitude of the Angel. Addi- 
son was instantly appointed to a conimissionership 
worth about two hundred pounds a year, and was 
assured that this appointment was only an earnest 
of greater favors. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 157 

55. The Campaign came forth, and was as 
much admired by the public as by the minister. 
It pleases us less on the whole than the Epistle to 
Halifax. Yet it undoubtedly ranks high among 
the poems which appeared during the interval 5 
between the death of Dryden and the dawn of 
Pope's genius. The chief merit of the Campaign, 
we think, is that which was noticed by Johnson, 
the manly and rational rejection of fiction. The 
first great poet whose works have come down to 10 
us sang of war long before war became a science 
or a trade. If, in his time, there was enmity be- 
tween two little Creek towns, each poured forth 
its crowd of citizens, ignorant of discipline, and 
armed with implements of labor rudely turned 15 
into weapons. On each side appeared conspicu- 
ous a few chiefs, whose wealth had enabled them 
to procure good armor, horses, and chariots, and 
whose leisure had enabled them to practise mili- 
tary exercises. One such chief, if he were a man 20 
of great strength, agility, and courage, would 
probably be more formidable than twenty common 
men ; and the force and dexterity with which he 
Hung his spear might have no inconsiderable 



158 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

share in deciding the eA^ent of the day. Such 
were probably the battles with which Homer was 
familiar. But Homer related the actions of men 
of a former generation, of men who sprang from 

5 the gods, and communed with the gods face to 
face ; of men, one of whom could with ease hurl 
rocks which two sturdy hinds of a later period 
would be unable even to lift. He therefore nat- 
urally represented their martial exploits as re- 

10 sembling in kind, but far surpassing in magni- 
tude, those of the stoutest and most expert 
combatants of his own age. Achilles, clad in 
celestial armor, drawn by celestial coursers, grasp- 
ing the spear which none but himself could raise, 

15 driving all Troy and Lycia before him, and chok- 
ing Scamander with dead, was only a magnificent 
exaggeration of the real hero, who, strong, fear- 
less, accustomed to the use of weapons, guarded 
by a shield and helmet of the best Sidonian fabric, 

20 and whirled along by horses of Thessalian breed, 
struck down with his own right arm, foe after foe. 
In all rude societies similar notions are found. 
There are at this day countries where the Life- 
guardsman Shaw would be considered as a much 



THE LIFE AND WHIT IN (IS OF ADDISON. 159 

greater warrior than the Duke of Wellington. 
Bonaparte loved to describe the astonishment 
with which the Mamelukes looked at his diminu- 
tive figure. Mourad Bey, distinguished above all 
his fellows by his bodily strength, and by the skill 5 
with which he managed his horse and his sabre, 
could not believe that a man who was scarcely 
five feet high, and rode like a butcher, could be 
the greatest soldier in Europe. 

56. Homer's descriptions of war had therefore 10 
as much truth as poetry requires. But truth was 
altogether wanting to the performances of those 
who, writing about battles which had scarcely any- 
thing in common with the battles of his times, 
servilely imitated his manner. The folly of Silius 15 
Italicus, in particular, is positively nauseous. He 
undertook to record in verse the vicissitudes of a 
great struggle between generals of the first order ; 
and his narrative is made up of the hideous wounds 
which these generals inflicted with their own 20 
hands. Asdrubal flings a spear, which grazes the 
shoulder of the consul Nero ; but Nero sends his 
spear into AsdrubaFs side. Fabius slays Thuris 
and Butes and Maris and Arses, and the long- 



160 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

haired Adherbes, and the gigantic Thylis, and 
Sapharns and Momesus, and the trumpeter Mori- 
nus. Hannibal runs Perusinus through the groin 
with a stake, and breaks the backbone of Telesinus 

5 with a huge stone. This detestable fashion was 
copied in modern times, and continued to prevail 
down to the age of Addison. Several versifiers 
had described William turning thousands to flight 
by his single prowess, and dyeing the Boyne with 

10 Irish blood. Nay, so estimable a writer as John 
Philips, the author of the Splendid Shilling, repre- 
sented Marlborough as ha vino- won the battle of 
Blenheim merely by strength of muscle and skill in 
fence. The following lines may serve as an 

15 example : — 

" Churchill, viewing where 
The violence of Tallard most prevailed, 
Came to oppose his slaughtering arm. With speed 
Precipitate he rode, urging his way 

20 ( >'er hills of gasping heroes, and fallen steeds 

Rolling in death. Destruction, grim with blood, 
Attends his furious course. Around his head 
The glowing balls play innocent, while he 
With dire impetuous sway deals fatal blows 

25 Among the flying Gauls. In Gallic blood 

He dyes his reeking sword, and strews the ground 
With headless ranks. What can they do ? Or how 
Withstand his wide-destroying sword ? " 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON, lfil 

57. Addison, with excellent sense and taste, 
departed from this ridiculous fashion. He re- 
served his praise for the qualities which made 
Marlborough truly great, — energy, sagacity, mili- 
tary science. But, above all, the poet extolled the 5 
firmness of that mind which, in the midst of con- 
fusion, uproar, and slaughter, examined and dis- 
posed everything witli the serene wisdom of a 
higher intelligence. 

58. Here it was that he introduced the famous hi 
comparison of Marlborough to an Angel guiding 
the whirlwind. We will not dispute the general 
justice of Johnson's remarks on this passage. But 
we must point out one circumstance which appears 
to have escaped all the critics. The extraordinary 15 
effect which this simile produced when it first 
appeared, and which to the following generation 
seemed inexplicable, is doubtless to be chiefly 
attributed to a line which most readers now re- 
gard as a feeble parenthesis : — 20 

" Such as. of late o'er pale Britannia passed." 

Addison spoke, not of a storm, but of the storm. 
The great tempest of November, 1703, the only 



162 MACAU LAY'S ESSAYS. 

tempest which in our latitude has equalled the 
rage of a tropical hurricane, had left a dreadful 
recollection in the minds of all men. No other 
tempest was ever in this country the occasion of a 

5 parliamentary address or of a public fast. Whole 
fleets had been cast away. Large mansions had 
been blown down. One prelate had been buried 
beneath the ruins of his palace. London and Bris- 
tol had presented the appearance of cities just 

10 sacked. Hundreds of families were still in mourn- 
ing. The prostrate trunks of large trees, and the 
ruins of houses, still attested, in all the southern 
counties, the fury of the blast. The popularity 
which the simile of the Angel enjoyed among 

15 Addison's contemporaries, has always seemed to us 
to be a remarkable instance of the advantage 
which, in rhetoric and poetry, the particular has 
over the general. 

59- Soon after the Campaign, was published 

20 Addison's Narrative of his Travels in Italy. The 
first effect produced by this narrative was disap- 
pointment. The crowd of readers who expected 
politics and scandal, speculations on the projects of 
Victor Amadeus, and anecdotes about the jollities 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 163 

of convents and amours of cardinals and nuns, 
were confounded by finding that the writer's mind 
was much more occupied by the war between the 
Trojans and Rutulians than by the war between 
France and Austria ; and that he seemed to have 5 
heard no scandal of later date than the gallantries 
of the Empress Faustina. In time, however, the 
judgment of the many was overruled by that of 
the few ; and, before the book was reprinted, it 
was so eagerly sought that it sold for five times the 10 
original price. It is still read with pleasure : the 
style is pure and flowing ; the classical quotations 
and allusions are numerous and happy ; and we are 
now and then charmed by that singularly humane 
and delicate humor in which Addison excelled all 15 
men. Yet this agreeable work, even when con- 
sidered merely as the history of a literary tour, 
may justly be censured on account of its faults of 
omission. We have already said that, though rich 
in extracts from the Latin poets, it contains 20 
scarcely any references to the Latin orators and 
historians. We must add, that it contains little, 
or rather no, information respecting the history 
and literature of modern Italy. To the best of our 



164 MACAU LAY'S ESSAYS. 

remembrance, Addison does not mention Dante, 
Petrarch, Boccaccio, Boiardo, Berni, Lorenzo de' 
Medici, or Machiavelli. He coldly tells us that at 
Ferrara he saw the tomb of Ariosto, and that at 

5 Venice he heard the gondoliers sing verses of 
Tasso. But for Tasso and Ariosto he cared far 
less than for Valerius Flaccus and Sidonius Apol- 
linaris. The gentle flow of the Ticin brings a line 
of Silius to his mind. The sulphurous steam of 

10 Albula suggests to him several passages of Martial. 
But he has not a word to say of the illustrious dead 
of Santa Croce ; he crosses the wood of Ravenna 
without recollecting the Spectre Huntsman ; and 
wanders up and down Rimini without one thought 

15 of Francesca. At Paris he had eagerly sought an 
introduction to Boileau ; but he seems not to have 
been at all aware that at Florence he was in the 
vicinity of a poet Avith whom Boileau could not 
sustain a comparison, of the greatest lyric poet of 

20 modern times, Vincenzio Filicaja. This is the 
more remarkable, because Filicaja was the favorite 
poet of the accomplished Somers, under whose 
protection Addison travelled, and to whom the 
account of the Travels is dedicated. The truth is, 



THE LTFE ANT) WRITINGS OF ADDISON, 165 

that Addison knew little, and cared less, about the 
literature of modern Italy. His favorite models 
were Latin. His favorite critics were French. 
Half the Tuscan poetry that he had read seemed 
to him monstrous, and the other half tawdry. 5 

60. His Travels were followed by the lively 
opera of Rosamond. This piece was ill set to 
music, and therefore failed on the stage, but it 
completely succeeded in print, and is indeed 
excellent in its kind. The smoothness with which 10 
the verses glide, and the elasticity with which 
they bound, is, to our ears at least, very pleasing. 
We are inclined to think that if Addison had left 
heroic couplets to Pope, and blank verse to Rowe, 
and had employed himself in writing airy and 15 
spirited songs, his reputation as a poet would have 
stood far higher than it now does. Some years 
after his death, Rosamond was set to new music 
by Doctor Arne ; and was performed with com- 
plete success. Several passages long retained 20 
their popularity, and were daily sung, during the 
latter part of George the Second's reign, at all the 
harpsichords in England. 

61. While Addison thus amused himself, his 



16(3 MAC AULA Y'S ESSAYS. 

prospects, and the prospects of his party, were 
constantly becoming brighter and brighter. In 
the spring of 1705 the ministers were freed from 
the restraint imposed by a House of Commons in 
5 which Tories of the most perverse class had the 
ascendency. The elections were favorable to the 
Whigs. The coalition which had been tacitly and 
gradually formed was now openly avowed. The 
Great Seal was given to Cowper. Somers and 

10 Halifax were sworn of the Council. Halifax was 
sent in the following year to carry the decorations 
of the order of the garter to the Electoral Prince 
of Hanover, and was accompanied on this honor- 
able mission by Addison, who had just been made 

15 Undersecretary of State. The Secretary of State 
under whom Addison first served was Sir Charles 
Hedges, a Tory. But Hedges was soon dismissed 
to make room for the most vehement of Whigs, 
Charles, Earl of Sunderland. In every department 

20 of the state, indeed, the High Churchmen were 
compelled to give place to their opponents. At the 
close of 1707, the Tories who still remained in 
office strove to rally, with Harley at their head. 
But the attempt, though favored by the Queen, 



THE LIFE AM) WHITINGS OF ADDISON. 167 

who had always been a Tory at heart, and who had 
now quarrelled with the Duchess of Marlborough, 

was unsuccessful. The time was not yet. The 
Captain General was at the height of popularity 
and glory. The Low Church party had a majority 5 
in Parliament. The country squires and rectors, 
though occasionally uttering a savage growl, were 
for the most part in a state of torpor, which lasted 
till they were roused into activity, and indeed into 
madness, by the prosecution of Sacheverell. Har- 10 
ley and his adherents were compelled to retire. 
The victory of the Whigs was complete. At the 
general election of 1708, their strength in the 
House of Commons became irresistible ; and before 
the end of that year, Somers was made Lord Pres- 15 
ident of the Council, and Wharton Lord Lieuten- 
ant of Ireland. 

62. Addison sat for Malmsbury in the House of 
Commons which was elected in 1708. But the 
House of Commons was not the field for him. 211 
The bashfulness of his nature made his wit and 
eloquence useless in debate. He once rose, but 
could not overcome his diffidence, and ever after 
remained silent. Nobody can think it strange 



168 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

that a great writer should fail as a speaker. But 
many, probably, will think it strange that Addison's 
failure as a speaker should have had no unfavor- 
able effect on his success as a politician. In our 

5 time, a man of high rank and great fortune might, 
though speaking very little and very ill, hold a con- 
siderable post. But it would now be inconceivable 
that a mere adventurer, a man who, Avhen out of 
office, must live by his pen, should in a few years 

10 become successively Undersecretary of State, Chief 
Secretary for Ireland, and Secretary of State, with- 
out some oratorical talent. Addison, without high 
birth, and with little property, rose to a post which 
dukes, the heads of the great houses of Talbot, 

15 Russell, and Ben thick, have thought it an honor 
to fill. Without opening his lips in debate, he 
rose to a post the highest that Chatham or Fox 
ever readied. And this he did before he had been 
nine years in Parliament. We must look for the 

20 explanation of this seeming miracle to the peculiar 
circumstances in which that generation was placed. 
During the interval which elapsed between the 
time when the Censorship of the Press ceased, and 
the time when parliamentary proceedings began to 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 169 

be freely reported, literary talents Avere, to a public 
man, of much more importance, and oratorical 
talents of much less importance, than in our time. 
At present, the best way of giving rapid and wide 
publicity to a fact or an argument is to introduce 5 
that fact or argument into a speech made in Parlia- 
ment. If a political tract Avere to appear superior 
to the Conduct of the Allies, or to the best num- 
bers of the Freeholder, the circulation of such a 
tract would be languid indeed when compared with 10 
the circulation of every remarkable word uttered in 
the deliberations of the legislature. A speech made 
in the House of Commons at four in the morning 
is on thirty thousand tables before ten. A speech 
made on the Monday is read on the Wednesday by 15 
multitudes in Antrim and Aberdeenshire. The 
orator, by the help of the shorthand writer, has to 
a great extent superseded the pamphleteer. It 
was not so in the reign of Anne. The best speech 
could then produce no effect except on those Avho 20 
heard it. It Avas only by means of the press that 
the opinion of the public without doors could be 
influenced ; and the opinion of the public Avithout 
doors could not but be of the highest impor- 



170 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

tance in a country governed by parliaments, and 
indeed at that time governed by triennial parlia- 
ments. The pen was, therefore, a more formid- 
able political engine than the tongue. Mr. Pitt 

5 and Mr. Fox contended only in Parliament. But 
Walpole and Pulteney, the Pitt and Fox of an 
earlier period, had not done half of what was ne- 
cessary, when they sat down amidst the acclama- 
tions of the Mouse of Commons. They had still 

10 to plead their cause before the country, and 
this they could do only by means of the press. 
Their works are now forgotten. But it is certain 
that there were in Grub Street few more assidu- 
ous scribblers of Thoughts, Letters, Answers, 

15 Remarks, than these two great chiefs of parties. 
Pulteney, when leader of the Opposition, and 
possessed of thirty thousand a year, edited the 
Craftsman. Walpole, though not a man of liter- 
ary habits, was the author of at least ten pam- 

20 phlets, and retouched and corrected many more. 
These facts sufficiently show of how great impor- 
tance literary assistance then was to the contending 
parties. St. John was certainly, in Anne's reign, 
the best Tory speaker ; Cowper was probably the 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 171 

best Whig speaker. But it may well be doubted 
whether St. John did so much for the Tories as 
Swift, and whether Cowper did so much for the 
Whigs as Addison. When these things are duly 
considered, it will not be thought strange that 5 
Addison should have climbed higher in the state 
than any other Englishman has ever, by means 
merely of literary talents, been able to climb. 
Swift would, in all probability, have climbed as 
high, if he had not been encumbered by his cas- 10 
sock and his pudding sleeves. As far as the hom- 
age of the great went, Swift had as much of it as 
if he had been Lord-Treasurer. 

63. To the influence which Addison derived 
from his literary talents was added all the influ- 15 
ence which arises from character. The world, 
always ready to think the worst of needy political 
adventurers, was forced to make one exception. 
Restlessness, violence, audacity, laxity of prin- 
ciple, are the vices ordinarily attributed to that 20 
class of men. But faction itself could not deny 
that Addison had, through all changes of fortune, 
been strictly faithful to his early opinions, and to 
his early friends ; that his integrity was without 



172 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

stain ; that his whole deportment indicated a fine 
sense of the becoming; that in the utmost heat of 
controversy, his zeal was tempered by a regard for 
truth, humanity, and social decorum ; that no out- 

5 rage could ever provoke him to retaliation un- 
worthy of a Christian and a gentleman ; and that 
his only faults were a too sensitive delicacy, and a 
modesty which amounted to bashfulness. 

64. He was undoubtedly one of the most popu- 

10 lar men of his time : and much of his popularity 
he owed, we believe, to that very timidity which 
his friends lamented. That timidity often pre- 
vented him from exhibiting his talents to the best 
advantage. But it propitiated Nemesis. It averted 

15 that envy which would otherwise have been ex- 
cited by fame so splendid, and by so rapid an 
elevation. No man is so great a favorite Avith the 
public as he who is at once an object of admira- 
tion, of respect, and of pity; and such were the 

20 feelings which Addison inspired. Those who en- 
joyed the privilege of hearing his familiar con- 
versation, declared with one voice that it was 
superior even to his writings. The brilliant Mary 
Montague said, that she had known all the wits, 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 173 

and that Addison was the best company in the 
world. The malignant Pope was forced to own, 
that there was a charm in Addison's talk which 
could be found nowhere else. Swift, when burn- 
ing with animosity against the Whigs, could not 5 
but confess to Stella that, after all, he had never 
known any associate so agreeable as Addison. 
Steele, an excellent judge of lively conversation, 
said, that the conversation of Addison was at 
once the most polite, and the most mirthful, that 10 
could be imagined ; that it was Terence and Catul- 
lus in one, heightened by an exquisite something 
which was neither Terence nor Catullus, but Ad- 
dison alone. Young, an excellent judge of serious 
conversation, said, that when Addison was at his 15 
ease, he went on in a noble strain of thought 
and language, so as to chain the attention of 
every hearer. Nor were Addison's great colloquial 
powers more admirable than the courtesy and the 
softness of heart which appeared in his conversa- 20 
tion. At the same time, it would be too much to 
say that he was wholly devoid of the malice which 
is, perhaps, inseparable from a keen sense of the 
ludicrous. He had one habit which both Swift 



174 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

and Stella applauded, and which we hardly know 
how to blame. If his first attempts to set a pre- 
suming dunce right were ill received, he changed 
his tone, " assented with civil leer, ,, and lured the 

5 nattered coxcomb deeper and deeper into ab- 
surdity. That such was his practice we should, 
we think, have guessed from his works. The 
Tatler's criticisms on Mr. Softly's sonnet, and the 
Spectator's dialogue with the politician who is so 

10 zealous for the honor of Lady Q — p — t — s, are 
excellent specimens of this innocent mischief. 

65. Such were Addison's talents for conversa- 
tion. But his rare gifts were not exhibited to 
crowds or to strangers. As soon as he entered a 

15 large company, as soon as he saw an unknown 
face, his lips were sealed, and his manners became 
constrained. None who met him only in great 
assemblies would have been able to believe that 
he was the same man who had often kept a few 

20 friends listening and laughing round a table, from 
the time when the play ended, till the clock of 
St. Paul's in Covent Garden struck four. Yet, 
even at such a table he was not seen to the best 
advantage. To enjoy his conversation in the 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 175 

highest perfection, it was necessary to be alone 
with him, and to hear him, in his own phrase; 
think aloud. " There is no such thing," he used 
to say, " as real conversation, but between two 
persons." 

66. This timidity, a timidity surely neither 
ungraceful nor unamiable, led Addison into the 
two most serious faults which can with justice be 
imputed to him. He found that wine broke the 
spell which lay on his fine intellect, and was there- 10 
fore too easily seduced into convivial excess. Such 
excess was in that age regarded, even by grave 
men, as the most venial of all peccadilloes, and 
was so far from being a mark of ill-breeding, that 

it was almost essential to the character of a fine 15 
gentleman. But the smallest speck is seen on a 
white ground ; and almost all the biographers of 
Addison have said something about this failing. 
Of any other statesman or Avriter of Queen Anne's 
reign, we should no more think of saving that he 20 
sometimes took too much wine, than that he wore 
a long wig and a sword. 

67. To the excessive modesty of Addison's 
nature we must ascribe another fault which gen- 



176 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

erally arises from a very different cause. He 
became a little too fond of seeing himself sur- 
rounded by a small circle of admirers, to whom 
he was as a king, or rather as a god. All these 

5 men were far inferior to him in ability, and some 
of them had very serious faults. Nor did those 
faults escape his observation ; for, if ever there was 
an eye which saw through and through men, it 
was the eye of Addison. But with the keenest 

10 observation, and the finest sense of the ridiculous, 
he had a large charity. The feeling with which 
he looked on most of his humble companions was 
one of benevolence, slightly tinctured with con- 
tempt. He was at perfect ease in their company ; 

15 he was grateful for their devoted attachment ; and 
he loaded them with benefits. Their veneration 
for him appears to have exceeded that with which 
Johnson was regarded by Boswell, or Warburton 
by Hurd. It was not in the power of adulation 

20 to turn such a head, or deprave such a heart, as 
Addison's. But it must in candor be admitted 
that he contracted some of the faults which can 
scarcely be avoided by any person who is so un- 
fortunate as to be the oracle of a small literary 

25 coterie. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. Ill 

68. One member of this little society was Eus- 
tace Budgell, a .young Templar of some liter- 
ature, and a distant relation of Addison. There 
was at this time no stain on the character of Bud- 
gell, and it is not improbable that his career would 5 
have been prosperous and honorable, if the life of 
Ids cousin had been prolonged. But, when the 
master was laid in the grave, the disciple broke 
loose from all restraint, descended rapidly from 
one degree of vice and misery to another, ruined 10 
his fortune by follies, attempted to repair it by 
crimes, and at length closed a wicked and unhappy 
life by self-murder. Yet, to the last, the wretched 
man, gambler, lampooner, cheat, forger, as he was, 
retained his affection and veneration for Addison, 15 
and recorded those feelings in the last lines which 
he traced before he hid himself from infamy under 
London Bridge. 

69. Another of Addisoirs favorite companions 
was Ambrose Philips, a good Whig and a mid- 20 
dling poet, who had the honor of bringing into 
fashion a species of composition which has been 
called, after his name, Namby Pamby. But the 
most remarkable members of the little senate, as 



178 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

Pope long afterwards called it, were Richard 
Steele and Thomas Tickell. 

70. Steele had known Addison from childhood. 
They had been together at the Charter House and 

5 at Oxford ; but circumstances had then, for a 
time, separated them widely. Steele had left 
college without taking a degree, had been dis- 
inherited by a rich relation, had led a vagrant 
life, had served in the army, had tried to find the 

10 philosopher's stone, and had written a religious 
treatise and several comedies. He was one of 
those people whom it is impossible either to hate 
or to respect. His temper was sweet, his affec- 
tions warm, his spirits lively, his passions strong, 

15 and his principles weak. His life was spent in 
sinning and repenting; in inculcating what was 
right, and doing what was wrong. In specula- 
tion, he was a man of piety and honor ; in prac- 
tice lie Avas much of the rake and a little of the 

20 swindler. He was, however, so good-natured that 
it was not easy to be seriously angry with him, 
and that even rigid moralists felt more inclined to 
pity than to blame him, when he diced himself 
into a spunging-house or drank himself into a 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 179 

fever. Addison regarded Steele with kindness 
not nnmingled with scorn, tried, with little suc- 
cess, to keep him out of scrapes, introduced him 
to the great, procured a good place for him, cor- 
rected his plays, and, though by no means rich, 5 
lent him large sums of money. One of these 
loans appears, from a letter dated in August, 
1708, to have amounted to a thousand pounds. 
These pecuniary transactions probably led to fre- 
quent bickerings. It is said that, on one occa- 10 
sion, Steele's negligence, or dishonesty, provoked 
Addison to repay himself by the help of a bailiff. 
We cannot join with Miss Aikin in rejecting this 
story. Johnson heard it from Savage, who heard 
it from Steele. Few private transactions which 15 
took place a hundred and twenty years ago, are 
proved by stronger evidence than this. But we 
can by no means agree with those who condemn 
Addison's severity. The most amiable of man- 
kind may well be moved to indignation, when 20 
what he has earned hardly, and lent with great 
inconvenience to himself, for the purpose of re- 
lieving a friend in distress, is squandered with 
insane profusion. We will illustrate our meaning 



180 MACAULAVS ESSAYS. 

by an example which is not the less striking be- 
cause it is taken from fiction. Dr. Harrison, in 
Fielding's Amelia, is represented as the most be- 
nevolent of human beings ; yet he takes in exe- 

5 cution, not only the goods, but the person of his 
friend Booth. Dr. Harrison resorts to this strong 
measure because he has been informed that Booth, 
while pleading poverty as an excuse for not pay- 
ing just debts, has been buying fine jewelry, and 

10 setting up a coach. No person who is well ac- 
quainted with Steele's life and correspondence can 
doubt that he behaved quite as ill to Addison as 
Booth was accused of behaving to Dr. Harrison. 
The real history, we have little doubt, was some- 

1"> thing like this: — A letter comes to Addison, 
imploring help in pathetic terms, and promising 
reformation and speedy repayment. Poor Dick 
declares that he has not an inch of candle, or a 
bushel of coals, or credit with the butcher for a 

20 shoulder of mutton. Addison is moved. He de- 
termines to deny himself some medals which are 
wanting to his series of the Twelve Ca-sars ; to 
put off buying the new edition of Bayle's Dic- 
tionary ; and to wear his old sword and buckles 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 181 

another year. In this way he manages to send a 
hundred pounds to his friend. The next day he 
calls on Steele, and finds scores of gentlemen and 
ladies assembled. The fiddles are playing. The 
table is groaning under champagne, burgundy, 5 
and pyramids of sweetmeats. Is it strange that a 
man whose kindness is thus abused, should send 
sheriff's officers to reclaim what is due to him? 

71. Tickell was a young man, fresh from Ox- 
ford, who had introduced himself to public notice io 
by writing a most ingenious and graceful little 
poem in praise of the opera of Rosamond. He 
deserved, and at length attained, the first place 
in Addison's friendship. For a time Steele and 
Tickell were on good terms. But they loved 15 
Addison too much to love each other, and at 
length became as bitter enemies as the rival bulls 
in Virgil. 

72. At the close of 1708 Wharton became Lord 
Lieutenant of Ireland, and appointed Addison 20 
Chief Secretary. Addison was consequently under 
the necessity of quitting London for Dublin. 
Besides the chief secretaryship, which was then 
worth about two thousand pounds a year, he 



182 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

obtained a patent appointing him keeper of the 
Irish Records for life, with a salary of three or 
four hundred a year. Budgell accompanied his 
cousin in the capacity of private secretary. 

5 73. Wharton and Addison had nothing* in com- 
mon but Whigffidsm. The Lord Lieutenant was 
not only licentious and corrupt, but was distin- 
guished from other libertines and jobbers by a 
callous impudence which presented the strongest 

10 contrast to the Secretary's gentleness and delicacy. 
Many parts of the Irish administration at this 
time appear to have deserved serious blame. But 
against Addison there was not a murmur. He 
long afterwards asserted, what all the evidence 

15 which we have ever seen tends to prove, that his 
diligence and integrity gained the friendship of 
all the most considerable persons in Ireland. 

74. The parliamentary career of Addison in 
Ireland has, we think, wholly escaped the notice 

20 of all his biographers. He was elected member 
for the borough of Cavan in the summer of 1709; 
and in the journals of two sessions his name fre- 
quently occurs. Some of the entries appear to 
indicate that he so far overcame his timidity as to 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 183 

make speeches. Nor is this by any means improb- 
able ; for the Irish House of Commons was a far 
less formidable audience than the English House ; 
and many tongues which were tied by fear in the 
greater assembly became fluent in the smaller. 5 
Gerard Hamilton, for example, who, from fear of 
losing the fame gained by his single speech, sat 
mute at Westminster during forty years, spoke 
with great effect at Dublin when he was secretary 
to Lord Halifax. 10 

75. While Addison was in Ireland, an event 
occurred to which he owes his high and permanent 
rank among British writers. As yet his fame 
rested on performances which, though highly re- 
spectable, were not built for duration, and which 15 
would, if he had produced nothing else, have now 
been almost forgotten ; on some excellent Latin 
verses ; on some English verses which occasionally 
rose above mediocrity ; and on a book of travels, 
agreeably written, but not indicating any extraor- 20 
dinary powers of mind. These works showed 
him to be a man of taste, sense, and learning. 
The time had come when he was to prove himself 
a man of genius, and to enrich our literature with 



184 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

compositions which will live as long as the English 
language. 

76. In the spring of 1709 Steele formed a liter- 
ary project, of which he was far indeed from fore- 

5 seeing the consequences. Periodical papers had 
during many years heen published in London. 
Most of these were political; but in some of them 
questions of morality, taste, and love-casuistry had 
been discussed. The literary merit of these w< >rks 

10 was small indeed ; and even their names are now 
known only to the curious. 

77. Steele had been appointed Gazetteer by 
Sunderland, at the request, it is said, of Addison, 
and thus had access to foreign intelligence earlier 

15 and more authentic than was in those times within 
the reach of an ordinary news-writer. This cir- 
cumstance seems to have suggested to him the 
scheme of publishing a periodical paper on a new 
plan. It Avas to appear on the days on which the 

20 post left London for the country, which were, in 
that generation, the Tuesdays, Thursdays, and 
Saturdays. It was to contain the foreign news, 
accounts of theatrical representations, and the lit- 
erary gossip of Will's and of the Grecian. It was 



THE LIFE AND WHITINGS OF ADDISON. 185 

also to contain remarks on the fashionable topics 
of the day, compliments to beauties, pasquinades 
on noted sharpers, and criticisms on popular 
preachers. The aim of Steele does not appear to 
have been at first higher than this. He was not 5 
ill-qualified to conduct the work which he had 
planned. His public intelligence he drew from 
the best sources. He knew the town, and had 
paid clear for his knowledge. He had read much 
more than the dissipated men of that time were in 10 
the habit of reading. He was a rake among 
scholars, and a scholar among rakes. His style 
was easy and not incorrect ; and though his wit 
and humor were of no high order, his gay animal 
spirits imparted to his compositions an air of 15 
vivacity which ordinary readers could hardly dis- 
tinguish from comic genius. His writings have 
been well compared to those light wines which, 
though deficient in body and flavor, are yet a 
pleasant small drink, if not kept too long, or car- 20 
ried too far. 

78. Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was 
an imaginary person, almost as well known in that 
age as Mr. Paul Pry or Mr. Samuel Pickwick in 



186 MAC AULA Y\S ESSAYS. 

ours. Swift had assumed the name of Bickerstaff 
in a satirical pamphlet against Partridge, the 
maker of almanacs. Partridge had been fool 
enough to publish a furious reply. Bickerstaff 

5 had rejoined in a second pamphlet still more 
diverting than the first. All the wits had com- 
bined to keep up the joke, and the town was long 
in convulsions of laughter. Steele determined to 
employ the name which this controversy had 

10 made popular: and in April, 1700, it was an- 
nounced that Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrolo- 
ger, was about to publish a paper called the Tatler. 

79. Addison had not been consulted about this 
scheme ; but as soon as he heard of it he deter- 

15 mined to give his assistance. The effect of that 
assistance cannot be better described than in 
Steele's own words. " I fared," he said, " like a 
distressed" prince who calls in a powerful neighbor 
to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When 

20 I had once called him in, I could not subsist with- 
out dependence on him." "The paper," he says 
elsewhere, " was advanced indeed. It was raised 
to a greater thing than I intended it." 

80. It is probable that Addison, when he sent 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 187 

across St. George's Channel his first contributions 
to the Tatler, had no notion of the extent and 
variety of his own powers. He was the possessor 
of a vast mine, rich with a hundred ores. But he 
had been acquainted only with the least precious 5 
part of his treasures, and had hitherto contented 
himself with producing sometimes copper and 
sometimes lead, intermingled with a little silver. 
All at once, and by mere accident, he had lighted 
on an inexhaustible vein of the finest gold. 10 

81. The mere choice and arrangement of his 
words would have sufficed to make his essays 
classical. For never, not even by Dryden, not 
even by Temple, had the English language been 
written with such sweetness, grace, and facility. 15 
But this was the smallest part of Addison's praise. 
Had he clothed his thoughts in the half French 
style of Horace Walpole, or in the half Latin style 
of Dr. Johnson, or in the half German jargon of 
the present day, his genius would have triumphed 20 
over all faults of manner. As a moral satirist he 
stands unrivalled. If ever the best Tatlers and 
Spectators were equalled in their own kind, we 
should be inclined to guess that it must have been 
by the lost comedies of Menander. 



188 MA CA ULA Y'S ES8A VS. 

82. In wit, properly so called, Addison was not 
inferior to Cowley or Butler. No single ode of 
Cowley contains so many happy analogies as are 
crowded into the lines to Sir Godfrey Kneller ; and 

5 we would undertake to collect from the Spectators 
as great a number of ingenious illustrations as can 
be found in Hudibras. The still higher faculty of 
invention Addison possessed in still larger meas- 
ure. The numerous fictions, generally original, 

10 often wild and grotesque, but always singularly 
graceful and happy, which are found in his essays, 
fully entitle him to the rank of a great poet, a 
rank to which his metrical compositions give him 
no claim. As an observer of life, of manners, of 

15 all the shades of human character, he stands in the 
first class. And what he observed he had the art 
of communicating in two widely different ways. 
He could describe virtues, vices, habits, whims as 
well as Clarendon. But he could do something 

20 better. He could call human beings into exist- 
ence, and make them exhibit themselves. If we 
wish to find anything more vivid than Addison's 
best portraits, we must go either to Shakespeare 
or to Cervantes. 



THE LIFE ANT) WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 189 



i or. 



83. But what shall we say of Addison's hunx 
of his sense of the ludicrous, of his power of 
awakening that sense in others, and of drawing 
mirth from incidents which occur every day, and 
from little peculiarities of temper and manner, 5 
such as may be found in every man ? We feel 
the charm : we give ourselves up to it ; but we 
strive in vain to analyze it. 

84. Perhaps the best way of describing Addi- 
son's peculiar pleasantry is to compare it with the 10 
pleasantry of some other great satirists. The three 
most eminent masters of the art of ridicule during 
the eighteenth century, were, we conceive, Addi- 
son, Swift, and Voltaire. Which of the three had 
the greatest power of moving laughter may be 15 

.questioned. But each of them, within his own 
domain, was supreme. 

X^. Voltaire is the prince of buffoons. His 
merriment is without disguise or restraint. He 
gambols ; he grins ; he shakes his sides ; he points 20 
the ringer ; he turns up the nose ; he shoots out 
the tongue. The manner of Swift is the very 
opposite to this. He moves laughter, but never 
joins in it. He appears in his works such as he 



190 MAC AULA Y^S ESSAYS. 

appeared in soeiety. All the company are con- 
vulsed with merriment, while the Dean, the author 
of all the mirth, preserves an invincible gravity, 
and even sourness of aspect, and gives utterance 

5 to the most eccentric and ludicrous of fancies, with 

the air of a man reading the commination service. 

86. The manner of Addison is as remote from 

that of Swift as from that of Voltaire. He neither 

laughs out like the French wit, nor, like the Irish 

10 wit, throws a double portion of severity into his 
countenance while laughing inwardly ; but pre- 
serves a look peculiarly his own, a look of demure 
serenity, disturbed only by an arch sparkle of the 
eye, an almost imperceptible elevation of the brow, 

15 an almost imperceptible curl of the lip. His tone 
is never that either of a Jack Pudding or of a 
cynic. It is that of a gentleman, in whom the 
quickest sense of the ridiculous is constantly 
tempered by good nature and good breeding. 

20 87. We own that the humor of Addison is, in 
our opinion, of a more delicious flavor than the 
humor of either Swift or Voltaire. Thus much, 
at least, is certain, that both Swift and Voltaire 
have been successfully mimicked, and that no man 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 191 

has yet been able to mimic Addison. The letter 
of the Abbe Coyer to Pansophe is Voltaire all 
over, and imposed, during a long time, on the 
Academicians of Paris. There are passages in 
Arbuthnot's satirical works which we, at least, 5 
cannot distinguish from Swift's best writing. But 
of the many eminent men who have made Addison 
their model, though several have copied his mere 
diction with happy effect, none have been able to 
catch the tone of his pleasantry. In the World, 10 
in the Connoisseur, in the Mirror, in the Lounger, 
there are numerous papers written in obvious imi- 
tation of his T<dh>rs and Spectators. Most of these 
papers have some merit ; many are very lively and 
amusing ; but there is not a single one which 15 
could be passed off as Addison's on a critic of 
the smallest perspicacity. 

88. But that which chiefly distinguishes Addi- 
son from Swift, from Voltaire, from almost all the 
other great masters of ridicule, is the grace, the 20 
nobleness, the moral purity, which we find even 
in his merriment. Severity, gradually hardening 
and darkening into misanthropy, characterizes the 
works of Swift. The nature of Voltaire was, in- 



192 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

deed, not inhuman ; but lie venerated nothing. 
Neither in the masterpieces of art nor in the 
purest examples of virtue, neither in the Great 
First Cause nor in the awful enigma of the grave, 

5 could he see anything but subjects for drollery. 
The more solemn and august the theme, the more 
monkey-like was his grimacing and chattering. 
The mirth of Swift is the mirth of Mephisto- 
pheles ; the mirth of Voltaire is the mirth of 

10 Puck. If, as Soame Jenyns oddly imagined, a por- 
tion of the happiness of seraphim and just men 
made perfect be derived from an exquisite per- 
ception of the ludicrous, their mirth must surely 
be none other than the mirth of Addison ; a 

15 mirth consistent with tender compassion for all 
that is frail, and with profound reverence for all 
that is sublime. Nothing great, nothing amiable, 
no moral duty, no doctrine of natural or revealed 
religion, has ever been associated by Addison 

20 with any degrading idea. His humanity is with- 
out a parallel in literary history. ^The highest 
proof of virtue is to possess boundless power with- 
out abusing it. No kind of power is more for- 
midable than the power of making men riclicu- 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 193 

lous ; and that power Addison possessed in bound- 
less measure. How grossly that power was abused 
by Swift and by Voltaire is well known. But of 
Addison it may be confidently affirmed that he 
has blackened no man's character, nay, that it 5 
would be difficult, if not impossible, to find in all 
the volumes which he has left us a single taunt 
which can be called ungenerous or unkind. Yet 
he had detractors, whose malignity might have 
seemed to justify as terrible a revenge as that 10 
which men, not superior to him in genius, wreaked 
on Bettesworth and on Franc de Pompignan. He 
was a politician ; he was the best writer of his 
party; he lived in times of fierce excitement, in 
times when persons of high character and station 15 
stooped to scurrility such as is now practised only 
by the basest of mankind. Yet no provocation 
and no example could induce him to return railing 
for railing. 

89. Of the service which his Essays rendered 20 
to morality it is difficult to speak too highly. It 
is true, that, when the Tatler appeared, that age 
of outrageous profanenes» and licentiousness which 
followed the Restoration had passed away. Jeremy 



194 MA CAUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

Collier had shamed the theatres into something 
which, coi)]] tared with the excesses of Etherege 
and Wycherley, might be called decency. Yet 
there still lingered in the public mind a pernicious 

5 notion that there was some connection between 
genius and profligacy ; between the domestic vir- 
tues and the sullen formality of the Puritans. 
That error it is the glory of Addison to have dis- 
pelled. He taught the nation that the faith and 

10 the morality of Hale and Tillotson might be found 
in company with wit more sparkling than the wit 
of Con grove, and with humor richer than the 
humor of Vanbrngh. So effectually, indeed, did 
he retort on vice the mockery which had recently 

15 been directed against virtue, that, since his time, 
the open violation of decency has always been con- 
sidered among us as the mark of a fool. And this 
revolution, the greatest and most salutary ever 
effected by any satirist, he accomplished, be it re- 

2o membered, without writing one personal lampoon. 
90. In the early contributions of Addison to 
the Tatler, his peculiar powers were not fully ex- 
hibited. Yet from the first, his superiority to all 
his coadintors was evident. Some of his later 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 195 

Tatler8 are fully equal to anything thai he ever 
wrote. Among the portraits, we most admire 
Tom Folio, Xed Softly, and the Political Uphol- 
sterer. The proceedings of the Court of Honor, 
the Thermometer of Zeal, the story of the Frozen 5 
Words, the Memoirs of the Shilling, are excellent 
specimens of that ingenious and lively species of 
fiction in which Addison excelled all men. There 
is one still better paper of the same class. But 
though that paper, a hundred and thirty-three 10 
years ago, was probably thought as edifying as 
one of Smalridge's sermons, we dare not indicate 
it to the squeamish readers of the nineteenth 
cent my. 

91. During the session of Parliament which \r> 
commenced in November, 1709, and which the 
impeachment of Sacheverell has made memorable, 
Addison appears to have resided in London. The 
Tiith'i- was now more popular than any periodical 
paper had ever been ; and his connection with it 20 
was generally known. It was not known, how- 
ever, that almost everything good in the Tatler 
was his. The truth is. that tin- fifty or sixty 
numbers which we owe to him were not merely 



196 MACAJTLAY*S ESSAYS. 

the best, but so decidedly the best that any five 
of them are more valuable than all the two hun- 
dred numbers in which he had no share. 

92. He required, at this time, all the solace 

5 which he could derive from literary success. The 
Queen had always disliked the Whigs. -She had 
during some years disliked the Marlborough 
family. But, reigning by a disputed title, she 
could not venture directly to oppose herself to a 

10 majority of both Houses of Parliament ; and, en- 
gaged as she was in a war on the event of which 
her own crown was staked, she could not venture 
to disgrace a great and successful general. But 
at length, in the year 1710, the causes which had 

15 restrained her from showing her aversion to the 
Low Church party ceased to operate. The trial 
of Sacheverell produced an outbreak of public 
feeling scarcely less violent than the outbreaks 
which we can ourselves remember in 1820, and in 

20 1831. The country gentlemen, the country clergy- 
men, the rabble of the towns, were all, for once, 
on the same side. It was clear that, if a general 
election took place before the excitement abated, 
the Tories would have a majority. The services 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 197 

of Marlborough had been so splendid that they 
were no longer necessary. The Queen's throne 
was secure from all attack on the part of Louis. 
Indeed, it seemed much more likely that the Eng- 
lish and German armies would divide the spoils of 5 
Versailles and Marti than that a Marshal of France 
would bring back the Pretender to St. James's. 
The Queen, acting by the advice of Harley, deter- 
mined to dismiss her servants. In June the 
change commenced. Sunderland was the first who 10 
fell. The Tories exulted over his fall. The 
Whigs tried, during a few weeks, to persuade 
themselves that her majesty had acted only from 
personal dislike to the Secretary, and that she 
meditated no further alteration. But, early in 15 
August, Godolphin was surprised by a letter from 
Anne, which directed him to break his white staff. 
Even after this event, the irresolution or dissimu- 
lation of Harley kept up the hopes of the Whigs 
during another month ; and then the ruin became 20 
rapid and violent. The Parliament was dissolved. 
The ministers were turned out. The Tories were 
called to office. The tide of popularity ran vio- 
lently in favor of the High Church party. That 



198 M AC AV LAY'S ESSAYS. 

party, feeble in the late House of Commons, was 
now irresistible. The power which the Tories had 
thus suddenly acquired, they used with blind and 
stupid ferocity. The howl which the whole pack 

5 set up for prey and for blood appalled even him 
who had roused and unchained them. When, at 
this distance of time, we calmly review the conduct 
of the discarded ministers, we cannot but feel 
a movement of indignation at the injustice with 

10 which they were treated. No body of men had ever 
administered the government with more energy, 
ability, and moderation ; and their success had 
been proportioned to their wisdom. They had 
saved Holland and Germany. They had humbled 

15 France. They had, as it seemed, all but torn 
Spain from the house of Bourbon. They had 
made England the first power in Europe. At 
home they had united England and Scotland. 
They had respected the rights of conscience and 

20 the liberty of the subject. They retired, leaving 
their country at the height of prosperity and 
glory. And yet they were pursued to their retreat 
by such a roar of obloquy as was never raised 
against the government which threw away thirteen 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 199 

colonies, or against the government which sent 
a gallant army to perish in the ditches of Wal- 
cheren. 

93. None of the Whigs suffered more in the 
general wreck than Addison. He had just sus- 5 
tained some heavy pecuniary losses, of the nature 
of which we are imperfectly informed, when his 
secretaryship was taken from him. lie had rea- 
son to believe that he should also be deprived of 
the small Irish office which he held b}^ patent. 10 
He had just resigned his fellowship. It seems 
probable that he had already ventured to raise his 
eyes to a great lady, and that, while his political 
friends were in power, and while his own fortunes 
were rising, he had been, in the phrase of the 15 
romances which were then fashionable, permitted 
to hope. But Mr. Addison the ingenious writer, 
and Mr. Addison the chief secretary, were, in her 
ladyship's opinion, two very different persons. 
All these calamities united, however, could not 20 
disturb the serene cheerfulness of a mind con- 
scious of innocence, and rich in its own wealth. 
He told his friends, with smiling resignation, that 
they ought to admire his philosophy ; that he had 



200 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

lost at once his fortune, his place, his fellowship, 
and his mistress ; that he must think of turning 
tutor again ; and yet that his spirits were as good 
as ever. 

5 94. He had one consolation. Of the unpopu- 
larity which his friends had incurred, he had no 
share. Such was the esteem with which he was 
regarded that, while the most violent measures 
were taken for the purpose of forcing Tory mem- 

10 hers on Whig corporations, he was returned to 
Parliament without even a contest. Swift, who 
was now in London, and who had already deter- 
mined on quitting the Whigs, wrote to Stella in 
these remarkable words : " The Tories carry it 

15 among the new members six to one. Mr. Addi- 
son's election has passed easily and undisputed ; 
and I believe if he had a mind to be king he 
would hardly be refused/' 

95. The good will with which the Tories re- 

20 garded Addison is the more honorable to him, 
because it had not been purchased by any conces- 
sion on his part. During the general election he 
published a political journal, entitled the Whig 
Examiner. Of that journal it may be sufficient to 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 201 

say that Johnson, in spite of his strong political 
prejudices, pronounced it to be superior in wit to 
any of Swift's writings on the other side. When 
it ceased to appear, Swift, in a letter to Stella, ex- 
pressed his exultation at the death of so formida- 5 
ble an antagonist. " He might well rejoice," says 
Johnson, " at the death of that which he could 
not have killed." " On no occasion," he adds, 
" was the genius of Addison more vigorously ex- 
erted, and on none did the superiority of his 10 
powers more evidently appear." 

96. The only use which Addison appears to 
have made of the favor with Avhich he was re- 
garded by the Tories was to save some of his 
friends from the general ruin of the Whig party. 15 
He felt himself to be in a situation which made it 
his duty to take a decided part in politics. But 
the case of Steele and of Ambrose Philips was 
different. For Philips, Addison even conde- 
scended to solicit, with what success we have not 20 
ascertained. Steele held two places. He was 
Gazetteer, and he was also a Commissioner of 
Stamps. The Gazette was taken from him. But 
he Avas suffered to retain his place in the Stamp 



202 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

Office, on an implied understanding that he should 
not be active against the new government ; and 
he was, during more than two years, induced by 
Addison to observe this armistice with tolerable 
5 fidelity. 

97. Isaac Bickers taff accordingly became silent 
upon politics, and the article of news which had 
once formed about one-third of his paper, alto- 
gether disappeared. The Tatler had completely 

10 changed its character. It was now nothing but a 
series of essays on books, morals, and manners. 
Steele therefore resolved to bring it to a close, and 
to commence a new work on an improved plan. It 
was announced that this new work would be pub- 
is lished daily. The undertaking was generally re- 
garded as bold, or rather rash ; but the event 
amply justified the confidence with which Steele 
relied on the fertility of Addison's genius. On 
the second of January, 1711, appeared the last 
20 Tatler. At the beginning of March following 
appeared the first of an incomparable series of 
papers, containing observations on life and litera- 
ture by an imaginary spectator. 

98. The Spectator himself was conceived and 



THE LIFE AND WHITINGS OF ADDISON. 203 

drawn by Addison ; and it is not easy to doubt 
that the portrait was meant to be in some features 
a likeness of the painter. The Spectator is a 
gentleman who, after passing a studious youth at 
the university, has travelled on classic ground, 5 
and has bestowed much attention on curious points 
of antiquity. He has, on his return, fixed his resi- 
dence in London, and has observed all the forms 
of life which are to be found in that great city ; 
has daily listened to the wits of Will's, has 10 
smoked with the philosophers of the Grecian, and 
has mingled with the [(arsons at Child's, and with 
the politicians at the St. James's. In the morning, 
he often listens to the hum of the Exchange ; in 
the evening, his face is constantly to be seen in 15 
the pit of Drury Lane Theatre. But an insur- 
mountable bashfulness prevents him from opening 
his mouth except in- a small circle of intimate 
friends. 

99. These friends were first sketched by Steele. 20 
Four of the club, the templar, the clergyman, the 
soldier, and the merchant, were uninteresting fig- 
ures, fit only for a background. But the other 
two, an old country baronet and an old town rake, 



204 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

though not delineated with a very delicate pencil, 
had some good strokes. Addison took the rude 
outlines into his own hands, retouched them, col- 
ored them, and is in truth the creator of the Sir 

5 Roger de Coverley and the Will Honeycomb with 
whom we are all familiar. 

100. The plan of the Spectator must be allowed 
to be both original and eminently happy. Every 
valuable essay in the series may be read with 

10 pleasure separately ; yet the five or six hundred 
essays form a Avhole, and a whole which has the 
interest of a novel. It must be remembered, too, 
that at that time no novel, giving a lively and 
powerful picture of the common life and manners 

15 of England, had appeared. Richardson was work- 
ing as a compositor. Fielding was robbing birds' 
nests. Smollett was not yet born. The narrative, 
therefore, which connects together the Spectator's 
essays, gave to our ancestors their first taste of an 

20 exquisite and untried pleasure. That narrative 
was indeed constructed with no art or labor. The 
events were such events as occur every day. Sir 
Roger comes up to town to see Eugenio, as the 
worthy baronet always calls Prince Eugene, goes 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 205 

with the Spectator on the water to Spring Gar- 
dens, walks among the tombs in the Abbey, 
and is frightened by the Mohawks, but conquers 
his apprehension so far as to go to the theatre 
when the Distressed Mother is acted. The Spec- 5 
tator pays a visit in the summer to Coverley Hall, 
is charmed with the old house, the old butler, and 
the old chaplain, eats a jack caught by Will Wim- 
ble, rides to the assizes, and hears a point of law 
discussed by Tom Touchy. At last a letter from 10 
the honest butler brings to the club the news that 
Sir Roger is dead. Will Honeycomb marries and 
reforms at sixty. The club breaks up ; and the 
Spectator resigns his functions. Such events can 
hardly be said to form a plot; yet they are related 15 
with such truth, such grace, such wit, such humor, 
such pathos, such knowledge of the human heart, 
such knowledge of the Avays of the world, that 
they charm us on the hundredth perusal. We 
have not the least doubt that if Addison had writ- 20 
ten a novel, on an extensive plan, it would have 
been superior to any that we possess. As it is, he 
is entitled to be considered not only as the greatest 
of the English essayists, but as the forerunner of 
the great English novelists. 25 



206 MAC A (LAY'S ESSA VS. 

101. W-% say this ojE Addison alone; Eor Addi- 
son is the Spectator, About three-sevenths of the 
work are his; and it is no exaggeration to say, 
that his worst essay is as good as the best essay 

5 of any of his coadjutors. His best essays approach 
near to absolute perfection ; nor is their excellence 
more wonderful than their variety. His invention 
never seems to flag; nor is he ever under the ne- 
cessity oi' repeating himself, or i)\' wearing out a 

10 subject. There are no dregs in liis Mine. He 
regales us after the fashion of that prodigal nabob 
who held that there was only one good glass in a 
bottle. As soon as we have tasted the first spark- 
lino- foam oi a jest, it is withdrawn, and a fresh 

L6 draught of nectar is at our lips. On the Monday, 
we have an allegory as lively and ingenious as 
Lueiaifs Auction of Lives; on the Tuesday, an 
Eastern apologue as richly colored as the Tales 
of Schehere/.ade : on the 1 Wednesday, a character 

20 described with the skill o( La Bruyere; on the 
Thursday, a scene from common life, equal to 
the best chapters in the Vicar o^ Wakefield : 
on the Friday, sonic sly Horatian pleasantry on 
fashionable follies, on hoops, patches, or puppet- 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 207 

shows; and on the Saturday, a religious medita- 
tion, which will bear a comparison with the finest 
passages in Massillon. 

102. It is dangerous to selecl where there is so 
much that deserves the highest praise. We will 5 
venture, however, fco say, that any person who 
wishes to form a just notion of the extent and 
variety of Addison's powers, will do well to read 
at one sitting the following papers: The two Visits 
to the Abbey, the visit to the Exchange, the Jour- 10 
nal of the Retired Citizen, the Vision of Mirza, 
the Transmigrations of Pug the Monkey, and the 
Death of Sir Roger de Coverley. 

103. The least valuable of Addison's contribu- 
tions to the Spectator are, in the judgment of our L5 
age, his critical papers. Vet his critical papers are 
always luminous, and often ingenious. The very 
worst of them must be regarded as creditable 1<» 
him, when the character of the school in which he 
had been trained is fairly considered. The best 20 
of them were much too good for his leaders. In 
truth, lie was not so far behind our generation as 
he was before his own. No essays in the Spectator 
were more censured and derided than those in 



208 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

which he raised his voice against the contempt 
with which our fine old ballads were regarded, and 
showed the scoffers that the same gold which, 
burnished and polished, gives lustre to the iEneid 

5 and the Odes of Horace, is mingled with the rude 
dross of Chevy Chase. 

104. It is not strange that the success of the 
Spectator should have been such as no similar work 
has ever obtained. The number of copies daily 

10 distributed was at first three thousand. It subse- 
quently increased, and had risen to near four 
thousand when the stamp tax was imposed. That 
tax was fatal to a crowd of journals. The Spec- 
tator, however, stood its ground, doubled its price, 

15 and, though its circulation fell off, still yielded a 
large revenue both to the state and to the authors. 
For particular papers, the demand was immense ; 
of some, it is said, twenty thousand copies were 
required. But this was not all. To have the 

20 Spectator served up every morning with the bohea 
and rolls was a luxury for the few. The majority 
were content to wait till essays enough had ap- 
peared to form a volume. Ten thousand copies 
of each volume were immediately taken off, and 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 209 

new editions were called for. It must be remem- 
bered, that the population of England was then 
hardly a third of what it now is. The number of 
Englishmen who were in the habit of reading, was 
probably not a sixth of what it now is. A shop- 5 
keeper or a farmer who found any pleasure in 
literature, was a rarity. Nay, there was doubtless 
more than one knight of the shire whose country 
seat did not contain ten books, receipt-books and 
books on farriery included. In these circum- 10 
stances, the sale of the Spectator must be consid- 
ered as indicating a popularity quite as great as 
that of the most successful works of Sir Walter 
Scott and Mr. Dickens in our own time. 

105. At the close of 1712 the Spectator ceased 15 
to appear. It was probably felt that the shortf aced 
gentleman and his club had been long enough be- 
fore the town ; and that it was time to Avithdraw 
them, and to replace them by a new set of char- 
acters. In a few weeks the first number of the 20 
Guardian was published. But the Guardian was 
unfortunate both in its birth and in its death. It 
began in dulness and disappeared in a tempest of 
faction. The original plan was bad. Addison 



210 MAC AULA Y'S ESSAYS. 

contributed nothing till sixty-six numbers had 
appeared ; and it was then impossible to make the 
Cruardian what the Spectator had been. Nestor 
Ironside and the Miss Lizards were people to 
5 whom even he could impart no interest. He 
could only furnish some excellent little essays, 
both serious and comic ; and this he did. 

106. Why Addison gave no assistance to the 
Ghiardian during the first two months of its ex- 

10 istence, is a question which has puzzled the edi- 
tors and biographers, but which seems to us to 
admit of a very easy solution. He was then en- 
gaged in bringing his Cato on the stage. 

107. The first four acts of this drama had been 
15 lying in his desk since his return from Italy. His 

modest and sensitive nature shrank from the risk 
of a public and shameful failure ; and, though all 
who saw the manuscript were loud in praise, some 
thought it possible that an audience might become 
20 impatient even of very good rhetoric, and advised 
Addison to print the play without hazarding a 
representation. At length, after many fits of ap- 
prehension, the poet yielded to the urgency of 
his political friends, who hoped that the public 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 211 

would discover some analogy between the follow- 
ers of Caesar and the Tories, between Sempronius 
and the apostate Whigs, between Cato, struggling 
to the last for the liberties of Rome, and the band 
of patriots who still stood firm round Halifax and 5 
Wharton. 

108. Addison gave the play to the managers of 
Drury Lane Theatre, without stipulating for any 
advantage to himself. They, therefore, thought 
themselves bound to spare no cost in scenery and 10 
dresses. The decorations, it is true, would not 
have pleased the skilful eye of Mr. Mac ready. 
Juba's waistcoat blazed with gold lace; Marcia's 
hoop was worthy of a duchess on the birthday; 
and Cato wore a wig worth fifty guineas. The 15 
prologue was written by Pope, and is undoubtedly 
a dignified and spirited composition. The part of 
the hero was excellently played by Booth. Steele 
undertook to pack a house. The boxes were in a 
blaze with the stars of the Peers in Opposition. 20 
The pit was crowded with attentive and friendly 
listeners from the Inns of Court and the literary 
coffee-houses. Sir Gilbert Heathcote, Governor of 
the Bank of England, was at the head of a power- 



212 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

ful body of auxiliaries from the city, warm men 
and true Whigs, but better known at Jonathan's 
and Garra way's than in the haunts of wits and 
critics. 

5 109. These precautions were quite superfluous. 
The Tories, as a body, regarded Addison with no 
unkind feelings. Nor was it for their interest, 
professing, as they did, profound reverence for 
law and prescription, an abhorrence both of pop- 

10 ular insurrections and of standing armies, to ap- 
propriate to themselves reflections thrown on the 
great military chief and demagogue, who, with 
the support of the legions and of the common 
people, subverted all the ancient institutions of 

15 his country. Accordingly, every shout that was 
raised by the members of the Kit Cat was echoed 
by the High Churchmen of the October ; and the 
curtain at length fell amidst thunders of unani- 
mous applause. 

20 110. The delight and admiration of the town 
were described by the Guardian in terms which 
we might attribute to partiality, were it not that 
the Examiner, the organ of the ministry, held 
similar language. The Tories, indeed, found 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 213 

much to sneer at in the conduct of their oppo- 
nents. Steele had on this, as on other occasions, 
shown more zeal than taste or judgment. The 
honest citizens who marched under the orders of 
Sir Gibby, as he was facetiously called, probably 5 
knew better when to buy and when to sell stock 
than when to clap and when to hiss at a play, 
and incurred some ridicule by making the hypo- 
critical Sempronius their favorite, and by giving 
to his insincere rants louder plaudits than they 10 
bestowed on the temperate eloquence of Cato. 
Wharton, too, who had the incredible effrontery 
to applaud the lines about flying from prosperous 
vice and from the power of impious men to a pri- 
vate station, did not escape the sarcasms of those 15 
who justly thought that he could fly from nothing 
more vicious or impious than himself. The epi- 
logue, which was written by Garth, a zealous 
Whig, was severely and not unreasonably cen- 
sured as ignoble and out of place. But Addison 20 
was described, even by the bitterest Tory writers, 
as a gentleman of wit and virtue, in whose friend- 
ship many persons of both parties were happy, 
and whose name ought not to be mixed up with 
factious squabbles. 25 



214 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

111. Of the jests by which the triumph of the 
Whig party was disturbed, the most severe and 
happy was Bolingbroke's. Between two acts he 
sent for Booth to his box, and presented him, be- 

5 fore the whole theatre, with a purse of fifty 
guineas for defending the cause of liberty so 
well against a perpetual Dictator. This was a 
pungent allusion to the attempt which Marlbor- 
ough had made, not long before his fall, to obtain 

10 a patent creating him Captain General for life. 

112. It was April ; and in April, a hundred and 
thirty years ago, the London season was thought 
to be far advanced. During a whole month, how- 
ever, Cato was performed to overflowing houses, 

15 and brought into the treasury of the theatre twice 
the gains of an ordinary spring. In the summer 
the Drury Lane company went down to act 
at Oxford, and there, before an audience which 
retained an affectionate remembrance of Addison's 

20 accomplishments and virtues, his tragedy was 

enacted during several days. The gownsmen 

began to besiege the theatre in the forenoon, and 

by one in the afternoon all the seats were filled. 

113.* About the merits of the piece which had so 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 215 

extraordinary an effect, the public, we suppose, 
has made up its mind. To compare it with the 
masterpieces of the Attic stage, with the great 
English dramas of the time of Elizabeth, or even 
with the productions of Schiller's manhood, would 5 
be absurd indeed ; yet it contains excellent dia- 
logue and declamation, and, among plays fashioned 
on the French model, must be allowed to rank 
high, — not indeed with Athalie or Saul, but, we 
think, not below China, and certainly above any 10 
other English tragedy of the same school ; above 
many of the plays of Corneille ; above many of the 
plays of Voltaire and Alfieri; and above some 
plays of Racine. Be this as it may, we have little 
doubt that Cato did as much as the Tatlers, Spec- 15 
tutors, and Freeholders united, to raise Addison's 
fame among his contemporaries. 

114. The modesty and good nature of the suc- 
cessful dramatist had tamed even the malignity of 
faction. But literary envy, it should seem, is a 20 
fiercer passion than party spirit. It was by a 
zealous Whig that the fiercest attack on the Whig 
tragedy was made. John Dennis published Re- 
marks on Cato, which were written with some 



216 MACAULAT'S ESSAYS. 

acuteness and with much coarseness and asperity. 
Addison neither defended himself nor retaliated. 
On many points he had an excellent defence, and 
nothing would have been easier than to retaliate ; 

5 for Dennis had written bad odes, bad tragedies, 
bad comedies : he had, moreover, a larger share 
than most men of those infirmities and eccentri- 
cities which excite laughter ; and Addison's power 
of turning either an absurd book or an absurd man 

10 into ridicule was unrivalled. Addison, however, 
serenely conscious of his superiority, looked with 
pity on his assailant, whose temper, naturally 
irritable and gloomy, had been soured by want, by 
controversy, and by literary failures. 

15 115. But among the young candidates for Ad- 
dison's favor there was one distinguished by tal- 
ents from the rest, and distinguished, we fear, not 
less by malignity and insincerity. Pope was only 
twenty-five. But his powers had expanded to 

20 their full maturity ; and his best poem, the Rape 
of the Lock, had recently been published. Of his 
genius Addison had always expressed high admira- 
tion. But Addison had early discerned, what 
might, indeed, have been discerned by an eye less 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 217 

penetrating than his, that the diminutive, crooked, 
sickly boy was eager to revenge himself on society 
for the unkindness of nature. In the Spectator 
the Essay on Criticism had been praised with cor- 
dial warmth; but a gentle hint had been added 5 
that the writer of so excellent a poem would have 
done well to avoid ill-natured personalities. Pope, 
though evidently more galled by the censure than 
gratified by the praise, returned thanks for the 
admonition, and promised to profit by it. The 10 
two writers continued to exchange civilities, coun- 
sel, and small good offices. Addison publicly 
extolled Pope's miscellaneous pieces, and Pope 
furnished Addison with a prologue. This did not 
last long. Pope hated Dennis, whom he had 15 
injured without provocation. The appearance of 
the Remarks on Cato gave the irritable poet an 
opportunity of venting his malice under the show 
of friendship ; and such an opportunity could not 
but be welcome to a nature which was implacable 20 
in enmity, and which always preferred the tortuous 
to the straight path. He published, accordingly, 
the Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis. But 
Pope had mistaken his powers. He was a great 



218 MACAULAY\S ESSAYS. 

master of invective and sarcasm ; he could dissect 
a character in terse and sonorous couplets, brilliant 
with antithesis ; but of dramatic talent he was 
altogether destitute. If he had written a lampoon 

5 on Dennis, such as that on Atticus or that on 
Sporus, the old grumbler would have been crushed. 
But Pope writing dialogue resembled — to borrow 
Horace's imagery and his own — a wolf, which, 
instead of biting, should take to kicking, or a 

10 monkey which should try to sting. The Narrative 
is utterly contemptible. Of argument there is not 
even the show, and the jests are such as, if they 
were introduced into a farce, would call forth the 
hisses of the shilling gallery. Dennis raves about 

15 the drama, and the nurse thinks that he is calling 
for a dram. " There is," he cries, " no peripetia 
in the tragedy, no change of fortune, no change at 
all." " Pray, good sir, be not angry," says the 
old woman, " I'll fetch change." This is not 

20 exactly the jjleasantry f Addison. 

116. There can be no doubt that Addison saw 
through this officious zeal, and felt himself deeply 
aggrieved by it. So foolish and spiteful a pam- 
phlet could do him no good, and, if he were 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 219 

thought to have any hand in it, must do him 
harm. Gifted with incomparable powers of ridi- 
cule, he had never, even in self-defence, used 
those powers inhumanly or uncourteously ; and he 
was not disposed to let others make his fame and 5 
his interests a pretext under which they might 
commit outrages from which he had himself con- 
stantly abstained. He accordingly declared that 
he had no concern in the Narrative, that he dis- 
approved of it, and that if he answered the Remarks, 10 
he would answer them like a gentleman ; and he 
took care to communicate this to Dennis. Pope 
was bitterly mortified, and to this transaction we 
are inclined to ascribe the hatred with which he 
ever after regarded Addison. 15 

117. In September, 1713," the Guardian ceased 
to appear. Steele had gone mad about politics. 
A general election had just taken place : he had 
been chosen member for Stockbridge, and he fully 
expected to play a first part in Parliament. The 20 
immense success of the Tatler and Spectator had 
turned his head. He had been the editor of both 
those papers, and was not aware how entirely they 
owed their influence and popularity to the genius 



220 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

of his friend. His spirits, always violent, were 
now excited by vanity, ambition, and faction, to 
such a pitch that he every day committed some 
offence against good sense and good taste. All 

5 the discreet and moderate members of his own 
party regretted and condemned his folly. " I am 
in a thousand troubles," Addison wrote, " about 
poor Dick, and wish that his zeal for the public 
may not be ruinous to himself. But he has sent 

10 me word that he is determined to go on, and that 
any advice I may give him in this particular will 
have no weight with him." 

118. Steele set up a political paper called the 
Englishman, which, as it was not supported by 

15 contributions from Addison, completely failed. 
By this work, by some- other writings of the same 
kind, and by the airs which he gave himself at the 
first meeting of the new Parliament, he made the 
Tories so angry that they determined to expel 

20 him. The Whigs stood by him gallantly, but 
were unable to save him. The vote of expulsion 
was regarded by all dispassionate men as a tyran- 
nical exercise of the power of the majority. But 
Steele's violence and folly, though they by no 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 221 

means justified the steps which his enemies took, 
had completely disgusted his friends ; nor did he 
ever regain the place which he had held in the 
public estimation. 

119. Addison about this time conceived the de- 5 
sign of adding an eighth volume to the Spectator. 
In June, 1714, the first number of the new series 
appeared, and during about six months three pa- 
pers were published weekly. Nothing can be more 
striking than the contrast between the Englishman 10 
and the eighth volume of the Spectator, between 
Steele without Addison and Addison without 
Steele. The Englishman is forgotten ; the eighth 
volume of the Spectator contains, perhaps, the 
finest essays, both serious and playful, in the 15 
English language. 

120. Before this volume was completed, the 
death of Anne produced an entire change in the 
administration of public affairs. The blow fell 
suddenly. It found the Tory party distracted by 20 
internal feuds, and unprepared for any great effort. 
Harley had just been disgraced. Bolingbroke, it 
was supposed, would be the chief minister. But 
the Queen was on her death-bed before the white 



222 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

staff had been given, and her last public act was 
to deliver it with a feeble hand to the Duke of 
Shrewsbury. The emergency produced a coalition 
between all sections of public men who were at- 

5 tached to the Protestant succession. George the 
First was proclaimed without opposition. A coun- 
cil, in which the leading Whigs had seats, took 
the direction of affairs till the new King should 
arrive. The first act of the Lords Justices was to 

10 appoint Addison their secretary. 

121. There is an idle tradition that he was di- 
rected to prepare a letter to the King, that he could 
not satisfy himself as to the style of this composi- 
tion, and that the Lords Justices called in a clerk, 

15 who at once did what was wanted. It is not 
strange that a story so flattering to mediocrity 
should be popular; and we are sorry to deprive 
dunces of their consolation. But the truth must 
be told. It was well observed by Sir James 

20 Mackintosh, whose knowledge of these times was 
unequalled, that Addison never, in any official 
document, affected wit or eloquence, and that his 
despatches are, without exception, remarkable for 
unpretending simplicity. Everybody who knows 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 223 

with what ease Addison's finest essays were pro- 
duced, must be convinced that, if well-turned 
phrases had been wanted, he would have had no 
difficulty in finding them. We are, however, in- 
clined to believe, that the story is not absolutely 5 
without a foundation. It may well be that Addi- 
son did not know, till he had consulted expe- 
rienced clerks who remembered the times when 
William the Third was absent on the Continent, 
in what form a letter from the Council of Regency 10 
to the King ought to be drawn. We think it very 
likely that the ablest statesmen of our time, Lord 
John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, 
for example, would, in similar circumstances, be 
found quite as ignorant. Every office has some 15 
little mysteries which the dullest man may learn 
with a little attention, and which the greatest man 
cannot possibly know by intuition. One paper 
must be signed by the chief of the department; 
another by his deputy ; to a third the royal sign 20 
manual is necessary. One communication is to be 
registered, and another is not. One sentence must 
be in black ink, and another in red ink. If the 
ablest secretary for Ireland were moved to the 



224 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

India Board, if the ablest President of the India 
Board were moved to the War Office, he would 
require instruction on points like these ; and we 
do not doubt that Addison required such instruc- 
5 tion when he became, for the first time, Secretary 
to the Lords Justices. 

122. George the First took possession of his 
kingdom without opposition. A new ministry 
was formed, and a new Parliament favorable to 

10 the Whigs chosen. Sunderland was appointed 
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland ; and Addison again 
went to Dublin as Chief Secretary. 

123. At Dublin Swift resided; and there was 
much speculation about the way in which the 

15 Dean and the Secretary would behave towards 
each other. The relations which existed between 
these remarkable men form an interesting and 
pleasing portion of literary history. They had 
early attached themselves to the same political 

20 party and to the same patrons. While Anne's 
Whig ministry was in power, the visits of Swift 
to London and the official residence of Addison in 
Ireland had given them opportunities of knowing 
each other. They were the two shrewdest ob- 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 225 

servers of their age. But their observations on 
each other had led them to favorable conclusions. 
Swift did full justice to the rare powers of conver- 
sation which were latent under the bashful de- 
portment of Addison. Addison, on the other 5 
hand, discerned much good nature under the 
severe look and manner of Swift ; and, indeed, the 
Swift of 1708 and the Swift of 1738 were two 
very different men. 

124. But the paths of the two friends diverged 10 
widely. The Whig statesmen loaded Addison 
with solid benefits. They praised Swift, asked 
him to dinner, and did nothing more for him. 
His profession laid them under a difficulty. In 
the state they could not promote him ; and they 15 
had reason to fear that, by bestowing preferment 
in the church on the author of the Tale of a Tub, 
they might give scandal to the public, which had 
no high opinion of their orthodoxy. He did not 
make fair allowance for the difficulties which pre- 20 
vented Halifax and Somers from serving him, 
thought himself an ill-used man, sacrificed honor 
and consistency to revenge, joined the Tories, and 
became their most formidable champion. He 



226 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

soon found, however, that his old friends were 
less to blame than he had supposed. The dislike 
with which the Queen and the heads of the church 
regarded him was insurmountable ; and it was with 
5 the greatest difficulty that he obtained an ecclesi- 
astical dignity of no great value, on condition of 
fixing his residence in a country which he de- 
tested. 

125. Difference of political opinion had pro- 
10 duced, not indeed a quarrel, but a coolness be- 
tween Swift and Addison. They at length ceased 
altogether to see each other. Yet there was be- 
tween them a tacit compact like that between the 
hereditary guests in the Iliad : — 

15 "Eyx €a ° aWr/Xwp dXew/xeda Kal Si b/xi\ov • 

HoWoi fxev yap ep-ol TpQes kXcitoL t eiriKovpoi, 
Kreipetv, 6v k€ 6eos ye iropr) /ecu Tvoaal Kixeico, 
IloXXoi 5 1 ad aol 'A%cuot, evalpe'p.ev 6v kc dvvyai. 

126. It is not strange that Addison, whocalum- 
20 niated and insulted nobody, should not have 

calumniated or insulted Swift. But it is remark- 
able that Swift, to whom neither genius nor virtue 
was sacred, and who generally seemed to find, like 
most other renegades, a peculiar pleasure in at- 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 227 

tacking old friends, should have shown so much 
respect and tenderness to Addison. 

127. Fortune had now changed. The accession 
of the house of Hanover had secured in England 
the liberties of the people, and in Ireland the 5 
dominion of the Protestant caste. To that caste 
Swift was more odious than any other man. He 
was hooted and even pelted in the streets of 
Dublin ; and could not venture to ride along the 
strand for his health without the attendance of 10 
armed servants. Many whom he had formerly 
served now libelled and insulted him. At this 
time Addison arrived. He had been advised not 
to show the smallest civility to the Dean of St. 
Patrick's. He had answered, with admirable 15 
spirit, that it might be necessary for men whose 
fidelity to their party was suspected, to hold no 
intercourse with political opponents; but that one 
who had been a steady Whig in the worst times 
might venture, when the good cause was trium- 20 
pliant, to shake hands with an old friend who was 
one of the vanquished Tories. His kindness was 
soothing to the proud and cruelty wounded spirit 
of Swift; and the two great satirists resumed 
their habits of friendly intercourse. 25 



228 MAC A UL AY'S ESSAYS. 

128. Those associates of Addison whose politi- 
cal opinions agreed with his shared his good for- 
tune. He took Tickell with him to Ireland. He 
procured for Budgell a lucrative place in the same 

5 kingdom. Ambrose Philips was provided for in 
England. Steele had injured himself so much by 
his eccentricity and perverseness, that he obtained 
but a very small part of what lie thought his due. 
He Avas, however, knighted ; he had a place in the 

10 household ; and he subsequently received other 
marks of favor from the court. 

129. Addison did not remain long in Ireland. 
In 1715 he quitted his secretaryship for a seat at 
the Board of Trade. In the same year his comedy 

15 of the Drummer was brought on the stage. The 
name of the author was not announced ; the piece 
was coldly received ; and some critics have ex- 
pressed a doubt whether it were really Addison's. 
To us the evidence, both external and internal, 

20 seems decisive. It is not in Addison's best man- 
ner; but it contains numerous passages which no 
other writer known to us could have produced. It 
was again performed after Addison's death, and, 
being known to be his, was loudly applauded. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 229 

130. Towards the close of the year 1715, while 
the Rebellion was still raging in Scotland, Addi- 
son published the first number of a paper called 
the Freeholder. Among his political works the 
Freeholder is entitled to the first place. Even in 5 
the Spectator there are few serious papers nobler 
than the character of his friend Lord Somers, and 
certainly no satirical papers superior to those in 
which the Tory fox-hunter is introduced. This 
character is the original of Squire Western, and is 10 
drawn with all Fielding's force, and with a delicacy 
of which Fielding was altogether destitute. As 
none of Addison's works exhibits stronger marks 
of his genius than the Freeholder, so none does 
more honor to his moral character. It is difficult 15 
to extol too highly the candor and humanity of a 
political writer whom even the excitement of civil 
war cannot hurry into unseemly violence. Oxford, 
it is well known, Avas then the stronghold of Tory- 
ism. The High Street had been repeatedly lined 20 
with bayonets in order to keep doAvn the dis- 
affected gownsmen ; and traitors pursued by the 
messengers of the government had been concealed 
in the garrets of several colleges. Yet the admoni- 



230 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

tion which, even under such circumstances, Addi- 
son addressed to the university, is singularly 
gentle, respectful, and even affectionate. Indeed, 
he could not find it in his heart to deal harshly 

5 even with imaginary persons. His fox-hunter, 
though ignorant, stupid, and violent, is at heart a 
good fellow, and is at last reclaimed by the clem- 
ency of the king. Steele was dissatisfied with his 
friend's moderation, and, though he acknowledged 

10 that the Freeholder was excellently written, com- 
plained that the ministry played on a lute when it 
was necessary to blow the trumpet. He accord- 
ingly determined to execute a nourish after Ins 
own fashion, and tried to rouse the public spirit of 

15 the nation by means of a paper called the Town 
Talk, which is now as utterly forgotten as his 
Englishman, as his Crisis, as his Letter to the 
Bailiff of Stockbridge, as his Reader, in short, as 
everything that he wrote without the help of 

20 Addison. 

131. In the same year in which the Drummer 
was acted, and in which the first numbers of the 
Freeholder appeared, the estrangement of Pope 
and Addison became complete. Addison had 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 281 

from the first seen that Pope was false and 
malevolent. Pope had discovered that Addison 
was jealous. The discovery was made in a strange 
manner. Pope had written the Rape of the Lock, 
in two cantos, without supernatural machinery. 5 
These two cantos had been loudly applauded, and 
by none more loudly than by Addison. Then 
Pope thought of the Sylphs and Gnomes, Ariel, 
Momentilla, Crispissa, and Umbriel, and resolved 
to interweave the Rosicrucian mythology with the 10 
original fabric. He asked Addison's advice. Ad- 
dison said that the poem as it stood was a deli- 
cious little thing, and entreated Pope not to run 
the risk of marring what was so excellent in try- 
ing to mend it. Pope afterward declared that 15 
this insidious counsel first opened his eyes to the 
baseness of him who gave it. 

132. Now there can be no doubt that Pope's 
plan was most ingenious, and that he afterwards 
executed it with great skill and success. But 20 
does it necessarily follow that Addison's advice 
was bad ? And if Addison's advice was bad, 
does it necessarily follow that it was given from 
bad motives ? If a friend were to ask us whether 



232 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

we would advise him to risk his all in a lottery 
of which the chances were ten to one against him, 
we should do our best to dissuade him from run- 
ning such a risk. Even if he were so lucky as to 

5 get the thirty thousand pound prize, we should 
not admit that we had counselled him ill ; and we 
should certainly think it the height of injustice in 
him to accuse us of having been actuated by 
malice. We think Addison's advice good advice. 

10 It rested on a sound principle, the result of long 
and wide experience. The general rule undoubt- 
edly is that, when a successful work of imagina- 
tion has been produced, it should not be recast. 
We cannot at this moment call to mind a single 

15 instance in which this rule has been transgressed 
with happy effect, except the instance of the Rape 
of the Lock. Tasso recast his Jerusalem. Aken- 
side recast his Pleasures of the Imagination, and 
his Epistle to Curio. Pope himself, emboldened no 

20 doubt by the success with which he had expanded 
and remodelled the Rape of the Lock, made the 
same experiment on the Dunciad. All these atr 
tempts failed. Who was to foresee that Pope 
would, once in his life, be able to do what he 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 233 

could not himself do twice, and what nobody else 
has ever done? 

133. Addison's advice was good. But had it 
been bad, why should we pronounce it dishonest ? 
Scott tells us that one of his best friends predicted 5 
the failure of Waverley. Herder adjured Goethe 
not to take so unpromising a subject as Faust. 
Hume tried to dissuade Robertson from writing 
the History of Charles the Fifth. Nay, Pope him- 
self was one of those who prophesied that Cato io 
would never succeed on the stage, and advised 
Addison to print it without risking a representa- 
tion. But Scott, Goethe, Robertson, Addison, 
had the good sense and generosity to give their 
advisers credit for the best intentions. Pope's 15 
heart was not of the same kind as theirs. 

134. In 1715, while he was engaged in trans- 
lating the Iliad, he met Addison at a coffee-house. 
Philips and Budgell were there ; but their sover- 
eign got rid of them, and asked Pope to dine with 20 
him alone. After dinner, Addison said that he 
lay under a difficulty which he wished to explain. 

" Tickell," he said, " translated some time ago the 
first book of the Iliad. I have promised to look 



234 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

it over and correct it. I cannot, therefore, ask to 
see yours, for that would be double-dealing." 
Pope made a civil reply, and begged that his 
second book might have the advantage of Addi- 
5 son's revision. Addison readily agreed, looked 
over the second book, and sent it back with warm 
commendations. 

135. Tickell's version of the first book appeared 
soon after this conversation. In the preface, all 

10 rivalry was earnestly disclaimed. Tickell declared 
that he should not go on with the Iliad. That 

o 

enterprise he should leave to powers which he ad- 
mitted to be superior to his own. His only view, 
he said, in publishing this specimen was to be- 
15 speak the favor of the public to a translation of 
the Odyssey, in which he had made some progress. 

136. Addison, and Addison's devoted followers, 
pronounced both the versions good, but main- 
tained that Tickell's had more of the original. 

20 The town gave a decided preference to Pope's. 
We do not think it worth while to settle such a 
question of precedence. Neither of the rivals can 
be said to have translated the Iliad, unless indeed, 
the word translation be used in the sense which it 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 235 

bears in the Midsummer Night's Dream. When 
Bottom makes his appearance with an ass's head 
instead of his own, Peter Quince exclaims, " Bless 
thee ! Bottom, bless thee ! thou art translated." 
In this sense, undoubtedly, the readers of either 5 
Pope or Tickell may very properly exclaim, " Bless 
thee ! Homer ; thou art translated indeed." 

137. Our readers will, we hope, agree with us 
in thinking that no man in Addison's situation 
could have acted more fairly and kindly, both 10 
towards Pope, and towards Tickell, than he ap- 
pears to have done. But an odious suspicion had 
sprung up in the mind of Pope. He fancied, and 
he soon firmly believed, that there was a deep 
conspiracy against his fame and his fortunes. 15 
The work on which he had staked his reputation 
was to be depreciated. The subscription, on which 
rested his hopes of a competence, was to be de- 
feated. AVith this view Addison had made a rival 
translation ; Tickell had consented to father it ; 20 
and the wits of Button's had united to puff it. 

138. Is there any external evidence to support 
this grave accusation ? The answer is short. 
There is absolutely none. 



236 MAGAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

139. Was there any internal evidence which 
proved Addison to be the author of this version ? 
Was it a work which Tickell was incapable of 
producing ? Surely not. Tickell was a fellow 

5 of a college at Oxford, and must be supposed to 
have been able to construe the Iliad ; and he was 
a better versifier than his friend. We are not 
aware that Pope pretended to have discovered 
any turns of expression peculiar to Addison. Had 

10 such terms of expression been discovered, they 
would be sufficiently accounted for by supposing 
Addison to have corrected his friend's lines, as lie 
owned that he had done. 

140. Is there anything in the character of the 
15 accused persons which makes the accusation prob- 
able ? We answer confidently — nothing. Tickell 
was long after this time described by Pope him- 
self as a very fair and worthy man. Addison had 
been, during many years, before the public. Lit- 

20 erary rivals, political opponents, had kept their 
eyes on him. But neither envy nor faction, 
in their utmost rage, had ever imputed to him a 
single deviation from the laws of honor and of 
social morality. Had he been indeed a man 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 237 

meanly jealous of fame, and capable of stooping 
to base and wicked arts for the purpose of in- 
juring his competitors, would his vices have re- 
mained latent so long ? He was a writer of 
tragedy: had he ever injured Rowe? He was 5 
a writer of comedy : had he not done ample jus- 
tice to Congreve, and given valuable help to 
Steele ? He was a pamphleteer : have not his 
good nature and generosity been acknowledged 
by Swift, his rival in fame and his adversary in 10 
politics ? 

141. That Ticknell should have been guilty of a 
villany seems to us highly improbable. That Ad- 
dison should have been guilty of a villany seems 
to us highly improbable. But that these two men 15 
should have conspired together to commit a villany 
seems to us improbable in a tenfold degree. All 
that is known to us of their intercourse tends to 
prove, that it was not the intercourse of two ac- 
complices in crime. These are some of the lines 20 
in which Tickell poured forth his sorrow over the 
coffin of Addison : — 

" Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind, 
A task well suited to thy gentle mind ? 



238 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

Oh, if sometimes thy spotless form descend, 
To me thine aid, thou guardian genius, lend. 
When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms, 
When pain distresses, or when pleasure charms, 
5 In silent whisperings purer thoughts impart, 

And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart ; 
Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before, 
Till bliss shall join, nor death can part us more." 1 

142. Iii what words, we should like to know, 
10 did this guardian genius invite his pupil to join in 

a plan such as the editor of the Satirist would 
hardly dare to propose to the editor of the Age ? 

143. We do not accuse Pope of bringing an ac- 
cusation which he knew to be false. We have 

15 not the smallest doubt that he believed it to be 
true ; and the evidence on which he believed it he 
found in his own bad heart. His own life was 
one long series of tricks, as mean and as malicious 
as that of which he suspected Addison and Tickell. 

20 He was all stiletto and mask. To injure, to insult, 
and to save himself from the consequences of in- 
jury and insult by lying and equivocating, was 
the habit of his life. He published a lampoon on 
the Duke of Chandos ; he was taxed with it ; and 

25 he lied and equivocated. He published a lampoon 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 239 

on Aaron Hill ; he was taxed with it ; and he lied 
and equivocated. He published a still fouler lam- 
poon on Lady Mary Wortley Montague ; he was 
taxed with it ; and he lied with more than usual 
effrontery and vehemence. He puffed himself and 5 
abused his enemies under feigned names. He 
robbed himself of his own letters, and then raised 
the hue and cry after them. Besides his frauds 
of malignity, of fear, of interest, and of vanity, 
there were frauds which he seems to have com- 10 
mitted from love of fraud alone. He had a habit 
of stratagem, a pleasure in outwitting all who 
came near him. Whatever his object might be, 
the indirect road to it was that which he preferred. 
For Bolingbroke, Pope undoubtedly felt as much 15 
love and veneration as it was in his nature to feel 
for any human being. Yet Pope was scarcely 
dead when it was discovered that, from no motive 
except the mere love of artifice, he had been guilty 
of an act of gross perfidy to Bolingbroke. 20 

144. Nothing was more natural than that such 
a man as this should attribute to others that which 
he felt within himself. A plain, probable, coherent 
explanation is frankly given to him. He is certain 



240 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

that it is all a romance. A line of conduct scrupu- 
lously fair, and even friendly, is pursued towards 
him. He is convinced that it is merely a cover 
for a vile intrigue by which he is to be disgraced 

5 and ruined. It is vain to ask him for proofs. He 
has none, and wants none, except those which he 
carries in his own bosom. 

145. Whether Pope's malignity at length pro- 
voked Addison to retaliate for the first and last 

10 time, cannot now be known with certainty. We 
have only Pope's story, which runs thus. A pam- 
phlet appeared containing some reflections which 
stung Pope to the quick. What those reflections 
were, and whether they were reflections of which 

15 he had a right to complain, we have now no means 
of deciding. The Earl of Warwick, a foolish and 
vicious lad, who regarded Addison with the feel- 
ings with which such lads generally regard their 
best friends, told Pope, truly or falsely, that this 

20 pamphlet had been written by Addison's direction. 
When we consider what a tendency stories have 
to grow, in passing even from one honest man to 
another honest man, and when we consider that 
to the name of honest man neither Pope nor the 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 241 

Earl of Warwick had a claim, we are not disposed 
to attach much importance to this anecdote. 

146. It is certain, however, that Pope was furi- 
ous. He had already sketched the character of 
Atticus in prose. In his anger he turned this 5 
prose into the brilliant and energetic lines which 
everybody knows by heart, or ought to know by 
heart, and sent them to Addison. One 3harge 
which Pope has enforced with great skill is prob- 
ably not without foundation. Addison was, we 10 
are inclined to believe, too fond of presiding over 
a circle of humble friends, Of the other imputa- 
tions which these famous lines are intended to 
convey, scarcely one has ever been proved to be 
just, and some are certainly false. That Addison 15 
was not in the habit of "damning with faint 
praise " appears from innumerable passages in his 
writings, and from none more than from those in 
which he mentions Pope. And it is not merely 
unjust, but ridiculous, to describe a man who made 20 
the fortune of almost every one of his intimate 
friends, as "so obliging that he ne'er obliged." 

147. That Addison felt the sting of Pope's satire 
keenly, we cannot doubt. That he was conscious 



242 MAC A UL AY'S ESSAYS. 

of one of the weaknesses with which he was re- 
proached is highly probable. But his heart, we 
firmly believe, acquitted him of the gravest part 
of the accusation. He acted like himself. As a 

5 satirist he was, at his own weapons, more than 
Pope's match, and he would have been at no loss 
for topics. A distorted and diseased body, ten- 
anted by a yet more distorted and diseased mind ; 
spite and envy thinly disguised by sentiments as 

10 benevolent and noble as those which Sir Peter 
Teazle admired in Mr. Joseph Surface ; a feeble, 
sickly licentiousness; an odious love of filthy and 
noisome images ; these were things which a genius 
less powerful than that to which we owe the 

15 Spectator could easily have held up to the mirth 
and hatred of mankind. Addison had, moreover, 
at his command, other means of vengeance which 
a bad man would not have scrupled to use. He 
was powerful in the state. I 3 ope was a Catholic ; 

20 and, in those times, a minister would have found 
it easy to harass the most innocent Catholic by 
innumerable petty vexations. Pope, near twenty 
years later, said that, " through the lenity of the 
government alone he could live with comfort." 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 243 

" Consider/" he exclaimed, " the injury that a man 
of high rank and credit may do to a private per- 
son, under penal laws and many other disadvan- 
tages." It is pleasing to reflect that the only 
revenge which Addison took was to insert in the 5 
Freeholder a warm encomium on the translation of 
the Iliad, and to exhort all lovers of learning to 
put down their names as subscribers. There could 
be no doubt, he said, from the specimens already 
published, that the masterly hand of Pope would 10 
do as much for Homer as Dryden had done for 
Virgil. From that time to the end of his life, he 
always treated Pope, by Pope's own acknowledg- 
ment, with justice. Friendship was, of course, at 
an end. 15 

148. One reason which induced the Earl of 
Warwick to play the ignominious part of tale- 
bearer on this occasion, may have been his dislike 
of the marriage which was about to take place 
between his mother and Addison. The Countess 20 
Dowager, a daughter of the old and honorable 
family of the Middle tons of Chirk, a family which, 
in any country but ours, would be called noble, 
resided at Holland House. Addison had, dur- 



244 MA CAUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

ing some years, occupied at Chelsea a small dwell- 
ing, once the abode of Nell Gwynn. Chelsea 
is now a district of London, and Holland House 
may be called a town residence. But, in the days 

5 of Anne and George the First, milkmaids and 
sportsmen wandered between green hedges, and 
over fields bright with daisies, from Kensington 
almost to the shore of the Thames. Addison and 
Lady Warwick were country neighbors, and be- 

10 came intimate friends. The great wit and scholar 
tried to allure the young lord from the fashionable 
amusements of beating watchmen, breaking win- 
dows, and rolling women in hogsheads down Hol- 
born Hill, to the study of letters and the practice 

15 of virtue. These well-meant exertions did little 
good, however, either to the disciple or to the mas- 
ter. Lord Warwick grew up a rake ; and Addison 
fell in love. The mature beauty of the countess 
has been celebrated by poets in language which, 

2o after a very large allowance has been made for 
flattery, would lead us to believe that she was a 
fine woman :, and her rank doubtless heightened 
her attractions. The courtship Avas long. The 
hopes of the lover appear to have risen and fallen 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. '245 

with the fortunes of his party. His attachment 
was at length matter of such notoriety that, when 
he visited Ireland for the last time, Rowe addressed 
some consolatory verses to the Chloe of Holland 
House. It strikes us as a little strange that, in 5 
these verses, Addison should be called Lycidas, a 
name of singularly evil omen for a swain just 
about to cross St. George's Channel. 

149. At length Chloe capitulated. Addison was 
indeed able to treat with her on equal terms. He 10 
had reason to expect preferment even higher than 
that which he had attained. He had inherited the 
fortune of a brother who died Governor of Madras. 
He had purchased an estate in Warwickshire, and 
had been Avelcomed to his domain in very tolerable 15 
verse by one of the neighboring squires, the poeti- 
cal fox-hunter, William Somerville. In August, 
1716, the newspapers announced that Joseph 
Addison, Esquire, famous for many excellent 
works, both in verse and prose, had espoused the 20 
Countess Dowager of Warwick. 

150. He now fixed his abode at Holland House, 
a house which can boast of a greater number of 
inmates distinguished in political and literary his- 



246 MAC AULA Y\S ESSAYS. 

tory than any other private dwelling in England. 
His portrait still hangs there. The features are 
pleasing; the complexion is remarkably fair; but 
in the expression we trace rather the gentleness of 
5 his disposition than the force and keenness of his 
intellect. 

151. Not long after his marriage he reached the 
height of civil greatness. The Whig Government 
had, during some time, been torn by internal dis- 

10 sensions. Lord Townshend led one section of the 
Cabinet, Lord Sunderland the other. At length, 
in the spring of 1717, Sunderland triumphed. 
Townshend retired from office, and was accom- 
panied by Walpole and Cowper. Sunderland pro- 

15 ceeded to reconstruct the Ministry ; and Addison 
was appointed Secretary of State. It is certain 
that the Seals were pressed upon him, and were 
at first declined by him. Men equally versed in 
official business might easily have been found ; and 

20 his colleagues knew that they could not expect 
assistance from him in debate. He owed his ele- 
vation to his popularity, to his stainless probity, 
and to his literary fame. 

152. But scarcely had Addison entered the Cabi- 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 247 

net when his health began to fail. From one seri- 
ous attack he recovered in the autumn ; and his 
recovery was celebrated in Latin verses, worthy of 
his own pen, by Vincent Bourne, who was then at 
Trinity College, Cambridge. A relapse soon took 5 
place; and, in the following spring, Addison was 
prevented by a severe asthma from discharging the 
duties of his post. He resigned it, and was suc- 
ceeded by his friend Craggs, a young man whose 
natural parts, though little improved by cultiva- 10 
tion, were quick and showy, whose graceful person 
and winning manners had made him generally 
acceptable in society, and who, if he had lived, 
would probably have been the most formidable of 
all the rivals of Walpole. 15 

153. As yet there was no Joseph Hume. The 
ministers, therefore, were able to bestow on Addi- 
son a retiring pension of fifteen hundred pounds a 
year. In what form this pension was given we 
are not told by the biographers, and have not 20 
time to inquire. But it is certain that Addison 
did not vacate his seat in the House of Commons. 

154. Rest of mind and body seemed to have re- 
established his health; and he thanked God, with 



248 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

cheerful piety, for having set him free both from 
his office and from his asthma. Many years 
seemed to be before him, and he meditated many 
works, a tragedy on the death of Socrates, a trans- 

5 lation of the Psalms, a treatise on the evidences of 
Christianity. Of this last performance, a part, 
which we could well spare, has come down to us. 

155. But the fatal complaint soon returned, and 
gradually prevailed against all the resources of 

10 medicine. It is melancholy to think that the last 
months of such a life should have been overclouded 
both by domestic and by political vexations. A 
tradition which began early, which has been gen- 
erally received, and to which we have nothing to 

15 oppose, has represented his wife as an arrogant 
and imperious woman. It is said that, till his 
health failed him, he was glad to escape from the 
Countess Dowager and her magnificent dining- 
room, blazing with the gilded devices of the house 

20 of Rich, to some tavern where he could enjoy 
a laugh, a talk about Virgil and Boileau, and a 
bottle of claret with the friends of his happier 
days. All those friends, however, were not left to 
him. Sir Richard Steele had been gradually 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 249 

estranged by various causes. He considered him- 
self as one who, in evil times, had braved martyr- 
dom for his political principles, and demanded, 
when the Whig party was triumphant, a large 
compensation for what he had suffered when it was 5 
militant. The Whig leaders took a very different 
view of his claims. They thought that he had, by 
his own petulance and folly, brought them as well 
as himself into trouble, and though they did not 
absolutely neglect him, doled out favors to him 10 
with a sparing hand. It was natural that he 
should be angry with them, and especially angry 
with Addison. But what above all seems to have 
disturbed Sir Richard, was the elevation of Tickell, 
who, at thirty, was made by Addison Undersecre- 15 
tary of State ; while the editor of the Tatler and 
Spectator, the author of the Crisis, the member 
for Stockbridge who had been persecuted for firm 
adherence to the house of Hanover, was, at near 
fifty, forced, after many solicitations and com- 20 
plaints, to content himself with a share in the pat- 
ent of Drury Lane Theatre. Steele himself says, 
in his celebrated letter to Congreve, that Addison, 
by his preference«of Tickell, " incurred the warmest 



250 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

resentment of other gentlemen ; " and everything 
seems to indicate that, of those resentful gentle- 
men, Steele was himself one. 

156. While poor Sir Richard was brooding over 

5 what he considered as Addison's unkindness, a 
new cause of quarrel arose. The Whig party, 
already divided against itself, was rent by a new 
schism. The celebrated bill for limiting the num- 
ber of peers had been brought in. The proud 

10 Duke of Somerset, first in rank of all the nobles 
whose origin permitted them to sit in Parliament, 
was the ostensible author of the measure. But it 
was supported, and, in truth, devised by the Prime 
Minister. 

15 157. We are satisfied that the bill was most per- 
nicious ; and we fear that the motives which in- 
duced Sunderland to frame it were not honorable 
to him. But we cannot deny that it was supported 
by many of the best and wisest men of that age. 

20 Nor was this strange. The royal prerogative bad, 
within the memory of the generation then in the 
vigor of life, been so grossly abused, that it was 
still regarded with a jealousy which, when the 
peculiar situation of the House of Brunswick is 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 251 

considered, may perhaps be called immoderate. 
The particular prerogative of creating peers had, 
in the opinion of the Whigs, been grossly abused 
by Queen Anne's last Ministry ; and even the 
Tories admitted that her majesty in swamping, as 5 
it has since been called, the Upper House, had 
done what only an extreme case could justify. 
The theory of the English constitution, according 
to many high authorities, was that three indepen- 
dent powers, the sovereign, the nobility, and the 10 
commons, ought constantly to act as checks on 
each other. If this theory were sound, it seemed 
to follow that to put one of these powers under 
fcho absolute control of the other two was absurd. 
But if the number of peers were unlimited, it 15 
could not well be denied that the Upper House 
was under the absolute control of the Crown and 
the Commons, and was indebted only to their 
moderation for any power which it might be suf- 
fered to retain. 20 

158. Steele took part with the Opposition, Ad- 
dison with the ministers. Steele, in a paper called 
the Plebeian, vehemently attacked the bill. Sun- 
derland called for help on Addison, and Addison 



252 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

obeyed the call. In a paper called the Old Whig, 
he answered, and indeed refuted Steele's argu- 
ments. It seems to us that the premises of both 
the controversialists were unsound, that, on those 

5 premises, Addison reasoned well and Steele ill, 
and that consequently Addison brought out a 
false conclusion, while Steele blundered upon the 
truth. In style, in wit, and in politeness, Addison 
maintained his superiority, though the Old Whig 

10 is by no means one of his happiest performances. 

159. At hrst, both the anonymous opponents 

observed the laws of propriety. But at length 

Steele so far forgot himself as to throw an odious 

imputation on the morals of the chiefs of the ad- 

15 ministration. Addison replied with severity, but, 
in our opinion, with less severity than was due to 
so grave an offence against morality and decorum : 
nor did he, in his just anger, forget for a moment 
the laws of good taste and good breeding. One 

20 calumny which has been often repeated, and never 
yet contradicted, it is our duty to expose. It is 
asserted in the Biographia Britannica, that Addi- 
son designated Steele as " little Dicky." This 
assertion was repeated by Johnson, who had never 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 253 

seen the Old Whig, and was therefore excusable. 
It has also been repeated by Miss Aikin, who has 
seen the Old Whig, and for whom therefore there 
is less excuse. Now, it is true that the words 
" little Dicky " occur in the Old Whig, and that 5 
Steele's name was Richard. It is equally true that 
the words " little Isaac " occur in the Duenna, and 
that Newton's name was Isaac. But we confi- 
dently affirm that Addison's little Dicky had no 
more to do with Steele, than Sheridan's little Isaac 10 
with Newton. If we apply the words " little 
Dicky " to Steele, we deprive a very lively and 
ingenious passage, not only of all its wit, but of 
all its meaning. Little Dicky was the nickname 
of Henry Norris, an actor of remarkably small 15 
stature, but of great humor, who played the usurer 
Gomez, then a most popular part, in Dryden's 
Spanish Friar. 1 

1 We will transcribe the whole paragraph. How it can ever 
have been misunderstood is unintelligible to us. 20 

"But our author's chief concern is for the poor House of 
Commons, whom he represents as naked and defenceless, when 
the Crown, by losing this prerogative, would be less able to 
protect them against the power of a House of Lords. Who for- 
bears laughing when the Spanish Friar represents little Dicky, 25 



254 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

160. The merited reproof which Steele had re- 
ceived, though softened by some kind and courte- 
ous expressions, galled him bitterly. He replied 
with little force and great acrimony ; but no re- 

5 joinder appeared. Addison was fast hastening to 
his grave ; and had, we may well suppose, little 
disposition to prosecute a quarrel with an old 
friend. His complaint had terminated in dropsy. 
He bore up long and manfully. But at length he 

10 abandoned all hope, dismissed his physicians, and 
calmly prepared himself to die. 

161. His works he intrusted to the care of 
Tickell, and dedicated them a very few days be- 
fore his death to Craggs, in a letter written with 

15 the sweet and graceful eloquence of a Saturday's 

under the person of Gomez, insulting the Colonel that was able 
to fright him out of his wits with a single frown ? This Gomez, 
says he, flew upon him like a dragon, got him down, the Devil 
being strong in him, and gave him bastinado on bastinado, and 

20 buffet on buffet, which the poor Colonel, being prostrate, suf- 
fered with a most Christian patience. The improbability of 
the fact never fails to raise mirth in the audience ; and one may 
venture to answer for a British House of Commons, if we may 
guess, from its conduct hitherto, that it will scarce be either so 

25 tame or so weak as our author supposes." 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 265 

Spectator. In this, his last composition, he alluded 
to his approaching end in words so manly, so 
cheerful, and so tender, that it is difficult to read 
them without tears. At the same time he earnestly 
recommended the interests of Tickell to the care 5 
of Craggs. 

162. Within a few hours of the time at which 
this dedication was written, Addison sent to beg 
Gay, who was then living by his wits about town, 
to come to Holland House. Gay went, and was 10 
received with great kindness. To his amazement 
his forgiveness was implored by the dying man. 
Poor Gay, the most good-natured and simple of 
mankind, could not imagine what he had to for- 
give. There was, however, some wrong, the re- 15 
membrance of which weighed on Addison's mind, 
and which he declared himself anxious to repair. 
He was in a state of extreme exhaustion ; and 
the parting was doubtless a friendly one on both 
sides. Gay supposed that some plan to serve 20 
him had been in agitation at court, and had been 
frustrated by Addison's influence. Nor is this 
improbable. Gay had paid assiduous court to the 
royal family. But in the Queen's days he had 



256 MACAULAY\S ESSAYS. 

been the eulogist of Bolingbroke, and was still 
connected with many Tories. It is not strange 
that Addison, while heated by conflict, should 
have thought himself justified in obstructing the 

5 preferment of one whom he might regard as a 
political enemy. Neither is it strange that, when 
reviewing his whole life, and earnestly scrutinizing 
all his motives, he should think that he had acted 
an unkind and ungenerous part, in using his power 

10 against a distressed man of letters, who was as 
harmless and as helpless as a child. 

163. One inference may be drawn from this 
anecdote. It appears that Addison, on his death- 
bed, called himself to a strict account, and was 

15 not at ease till he had asked pardon for an injury 
which it was not even suspected that he had com- 
mitted, for an injury which would have caused 
disquiet only to a very tender conscience. Is it 
not then reasonable to infer that, if he had really 

20 been guilty of forming a base conspiracy against 
the fame and fortunes of a rival, he would have 
expressed some remorse for so serious a crime? 
But it is unnecessary to multiply arguments and 
evidence for the defence, when there is neither 

25 argument nor evidence for the accusation. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 257 

164. The last moments of Addison were per- 
fectly serene. His interview with his son-in-law 
is universally known. "See," he said, "how a 
Christian can die." The piety of Addison was, in 
truth, of a singularly cheerful character. The 5 
feeling which predominates in all his devotional 
writings is gratitude. God Avas to him the all- 
wise and allpowerful friend who had watched over 
his cradle with more than maternal tenderness ; 
who had listened to his cries before they could 10 
form themselves in prayer ; who had preserved his 
youth from the snares of vice ; who had made his 
cup run over with worldly blessings ; who had 
doubled the value of those blessings by bestowing 
a thankful heart to enjoy them, and dear friends 15 
to partake them ; who had rebuked the waves of 
the Ligurian gulf, had purified the autumnal air 
of * the Campagna, and had restrained the ava- 
lanches of Mont Cenis. Of the Psalms, his favor- 
ite was that which represents the Ruler of all 20 
things under the endearing image of a shepherd, 
whose crook guides ,the flock safe, through gloomy 
and desolate glens, to meadows well watered and 
rich with herbage. On that goodness to which he 



258 MAC AXJL AY'S ESSAYS. 

ascribed all the happiness of his life, he relied in 
the hour of death with the love that casteth out 
fear. He died on the seventeenth of June, 1719. 
He had just entered on his forty-eighth year. 

5 165. His body lay in state in the Jerusalem 
Chamber, and was borne thence to the Abbey at 
dead of night. The choir sang a funeral hymn. 
Bishop Atterbury, one of those Tories who had 
loved and honored the most accomplished of the 

10 Whigs, met the corpse, and led the procession by 
torchlight, round the shrine of Saint Edward and 
the graves of the Plantagenets, to the Chapel of 
Henry the Seventh. On the north side of that 
chapel, in the vault of the house of Albemarle, the 

15 coffin of Addison lies next to the coffin of Mon- 
tague. Yet a few months, and the same mourners 
passed again along the same aisle. The same sad 
anthem was again chanted. The same vault was 
again opened ; and the coffin of Craggs was placed 

20 close to the coffin of Addison. 

166. Many tributes were paid to the memory 
of Addison ; but one alone is now remembered. 
Tickell bewailed his friend in an elegy which 
would do honor to the greatest name in our litera- 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. 259 

ture, and which unites the energy and magnifi- 
cence of Dryden to the tenderness and purity of 
Cowper. This fine poem was prefixed to a superb 
edition of Addison's works, which was published 
in 1721, by subscription. The names of the sub- 5 
scribers proved how widely his fame had been 
spread. That his countrymen should be eager to 
possess his writings, even in a costly form, is not 
wonderful. But it is wonderful that, though 
English literature was then little studied on the 10 
continent, Spanish grandees, Italian prelates, 
marshals of France, should be found in the list. 
Among the most remarkable names are those of 
the Queen of Sweden, of Prince Eugene, of the 
Grand Duke of Tuscany, of the Dukes of Parma, 15 
Modena, and Guastalla, of the Doge of Genoa, of 
the Regent Orleans, and of Cardinal Dubois. We 
ought to add that this edition, though eminently 
beautiful, is in some important points defective ; 
nor, indeed, do we yet possess a complete collec- 20 
tion of Addison's writings. 

167. It is strange' that neither his opulent and 
noble widow, nor any of his powerful and attached 
friends, should have thought of placing even a 



260 MAC A TTLAT'S ESSAYS. 

simple tablet, inscribed with his name, on the walls 
of the Abbey. It was not till three generations 
had laughed and wept over his pages, that the 
omission was supplied by the public veneration. 

5 At length, in our own time, his image, skilfully 
graven, appeared in Poet's Corner. It represents 
him, as we can conceive him, clad in his dressing- 
gown, and freed from his wig, stepping from his 
parlor at Chelsea into his trim little garden, with 

10 the account of the Everlasting Club, or the Loves 
of Hilpa and Shalum, just finished for the next 
day's Spectator, in his hand. Such a mark of 
national respect was due to the unsullied states- 
man, to the accomplished scholar, to the master 

15 of pure English eloquence, to the consummate 
painter of life and manners. It was due, above 
all, to the great satirist, who alone knew how to 
use ridicule without abusing it, who, without in- 
flicting a wound, effected a great social reform, 

20 and who reconciled wit and virtue, after a long 
and disastrous separation, during which wit had 
been led astray by profligacy, and virtue by fa- 
naticism. 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY OIST 
MILTON. 



Page 1, line 7. office of Secretary. Milton was Latin 
secretary to the Commonwealth from 1649-1660. His duties 
were to carry on in Latin the diplomatic correspondence 
between England and foreign powers. 

1, 8. the Popish Trials took place on the discovery of 
the feigned Popish Plot, invented by Titus Oates in 1678. The 
Rye-house Plot was a Whig conspiracy to kill Charles II. 
Ir was discovered in time to prevent the murder, and several 
persons implicated were put to death. 

1. 10. Mr. Skinner : not Cyriac Skinner, to whom Milton 
addressed Sonnets xxi. and xcii., but his nephew, Daniel 
Skinner. After Milton's death he either took or sent the 
manuscript to Holland to have it published by Elzevir. The 
authorities interfered, however, and Elzevir gave up the 
manuscript to the Secretary of State, by whom it was pigeon- 
holed until it was quite forgotten. See GarneWs Life, pp. 
190-1. 

2, 1. Wood and Toiand. Anthony a Wood gives a life 
of Milton in his Atheive Oxonienses, 1691. John Toiand also 
published a life of Milton in 1698. 

2, 9. the Oxford Parliament. Charles II. in 1681 

261 



262 MAC AIT LAY'S ESSAYS. 

summoned Parliament to meet at Oxford as an appeal to the" 
country against the disloyalty of the capital. 

2, 16. Mr. Sumner was Royal Librarian and Chaplain to 
George IV. 

3, 10. Pharisees. Macaulay here means persons scrupu- 
lously careful of outward form, exactness and beauty. 

3, 16. Quintilian : a famous Roman teacher of rhetoric 
(35-96 a.d.). The quotation is from Milton's Sonnet xi. 

3, 21. Sir John Denham (1615-1669), in his elegy on the 
poet Abraham Cowley (1618-1667), says — 

" Horace's wit, and Virgil's state, 
He did not steal, but emulate ; 
And when ho would like them appear, 
Their garb, but not their clothes, did wear." 

4, 11. Arianism: the doctrines of Arius, an Alexandrian 
priest (4th century) who maintained that the Godhead con- 
sists of one eternal person, who in the beginning created, in 
his own image, a super-angelic being, his only begotten son 
by whom also he created the worlds. The first and greatest 
creature thus created through the Son of God, was the Holy 
Ghost. Arius thus denied the consubstantial nature of the 
persons of the Trinity: 

4, 19-20. the eternity of matter, and . . . the Sab- 
bath. " Matter is imperishable and eternal, because it is not 
only from God, but out of God." " The law of the Sabbath 
having been repealed, it is evident that no day of worship has 
been appointed in its place. 1 ' 

5, 4. Defensio Populi, " A Defense of the People of 
England," was a Latin prose work by Milton, written in justi- 
fication of the execution of Charles I. 

5, 16. Capuchins : an order of Franciscan monks, who 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON MILTON. 263 

received their name from the Capuche, or hood, which they 
wore. 

7, 13-15. Johnson . . . clumsy ridicule. Dr. Samuel 
Johnson, an 18th century lawgiver in literary matters, very 
harshly criticised Milton's poetry. For instance, of Milton's 
beautiful Sonnet xxiii., he wrote : — " His wife died, and he 
honored her memory with a poor sonnet." Or of Lycidas : 
"The diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, the numbers 
unpleasing. Its form is that of a pastoral ; easy, vulgar, and 
therefore disgusting.' 1 See Johnson's Lives of the Poets. 

9, 3. Mrs. Marcet (1769-1858) wrote a text-book for 
children entitled Conversations on Political Economy, and 
other educational works on Chemistry and Natural Philosophy. 

9, 5. Montague and Walpole were both great finan- 
ciers of the 18th century. Montague first advised the estab- 
lishment of the Bank of England. 

9, 8. Sir Isaac Newton (1G42-1727) was the foremost 
mathematician and natural philosopher of his time. Among 
his discoveries is the Law of Gravitation. 

10, 16. The Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) was the 
author of numerous publications concerning the workings of 
the human mind. He argued that persons can discern right 
and wrong by an inward sense, just as they see outward 
objects with the eye. 

10, 17. Helvetius: (1715-1771) a French philosopher, 
author of " De L'Esprit," a work in which he tries to prove 
that feeling is the source of intellectual activity, and that the 
chief spring of all human conduct is self-interest. 

10, 23. Niobe : was a Greek mythological character, cel- 
ebrated for her pride in her twelve children who were slain by 
Apollo, because Niobe had made a slighting comparison be- 



264 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

tween them and the two children of Leto. She was herself 
afterwards turned into stone by Zeus. 

Aurora was the goddess of the dawn. She is usually repre- 
sented as clothed in a rosy-yellow robe, with a star on her 
forehead and a torch in her right hand. 

11, 5. Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices made Public 
Benefits, was a satire written by Bernard de Mandeville (1670- 
1783). Its moral is that "luxury is the root of all civi-liza- 
tion." 

11, 22. the greatest of poets: i.e., Shakspere. The 
quotation is from Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V., Sc. i. 

13, 22. The Greek Rhapsodists were traveling min- 
strels, or professional reciters of poetry. See Plato's Ion, 
pp. 535, 53G. 

Plato : (h.c. 429-347) a Greek philosopher. 

15, 11. in our own time. Macaulay probably alludes to 
the poets of the Lake school, — Wordsworth, Coleridge, and 
Southey. 

15, 20. Rabbinical literature : literature composed by 
the Jewish Rabbis, and ranked by them as almost equal to 
that of the Bible. 

16, 2. Petrarch. Francesca Petrarcha (1304-1374), an 
Italian lyric poet, best known for his Italian Sonnets, wrote 
among other things a Latin epic called Africa. He had little 
first hand knowledge of the classic authors, his Latin being 
chiefly mediaeval. 

16, 12. Augustan : the name applied to a period extend- 
ing from a little before to a little after the reign of Augustus 
(b.c. 76-A.i). 4). Daring these years Rome reached her great- 
est eminence in art and literature. Ovid, Livy, Horace, and 
Virgil wrote during this period. 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON MILTON. 265 

16, 23. Epistle to Manso : a poem in Latin hexameters, 
written by Milton to Mans.). Marquis of Villa, who had enter- 
tained him when he visited Naples. 

17, lO-lo. The ({notation is from Paradise Lost, IV. 551- 
554. 

18,23. conductors, Macaulay means that Milton brings 
to the mind images and ideas through the medium of his 
words, as swiftly and as easily as a good conductor carries 
electricity from place to place. 

20, 7. " Open Sesame." Sesame is a kind of grain. See 
the tale of All Baba and the Forty Thieves in the Arabian 
Nights. 

20, 8. John Dryden (10ol-1700), a master of English 
verse and a cogent reasoner in rhyme, wrote, among other 
works, an opera called the State of Innocence. With Milton's 
permission he inserted into it some verses manufactured out of 
Paradise Lost. The piece is full of absurdities of his uninten- 
tional burlesque of Milton, whose style he could not well 
imitate. 

21,0. lists: the field or ground inclosed for combats at 
tournaments, housings : trappings or ornaments, usually 
of cloth, put on horses. 

21, 21. a stanza : Canto, in the first edition. 

22, 1. lyric poems: those which especially describe the 
poet's own thoughts and feelings, as opposed to dramatic 
or to narrative poems. 

22, 10. Lord Byron: (1788-1824), a celebrated English 
poet, the greatest of whose poems is Childe Harold's Pilgrim- 
age. The dramas here referred to are Marino Fallero, Two 
Foscari, Manfred, Cain, and Werner. In all his plays, Byron 
depicted only one character, and that character was Byron 



266 MACAULAY' S ESSAYS. 

himself. See Macaulay's review of Byron in the Edinburgh 
Review, 1830. 

22, 19. Harold: the hero of Byron's Childe Harold 1 s 
Pilgrimage. 

23, 9. -SJschylus : (b.c. 525-b.c. 450) is called the father 
of Greek tragedy. His best play, Agamemnon, has been 
admirably rendered into English verse by Robert Browning. 

23, 15. Herodotus: (b.c. 484-b.c 408), the oldest Greek 
historian. He often leaves the main thread of his history to 
speak in high terms of Egypt and Assyria. 

23, 21. Pindar : (b.c. 522-b.c. 442) the great lyric poet of 
Greece. 

24, 10. Sophocles: (b.c. 495-405) the second great mas- 
ter of Greek tragedy. 

24, 16. Euripides: (b.c. 480-400) the last of the three 
great Greek tragedians. Macaalay in later life spoke less un- 
favorably of him. In his copy of Euripides' works he wrote : 
" I can hardly account for the contempt which I felt at school 
and college for Euripides. I own I like him better now than 
Sophocles." 

25,2. "sad Electra's poet: i.e., Euripides. See Mil- 
ton's Sonnet VIII. 

25, 4. Bottom. See Midsummer NighVs Dream, Act IV., 
Sc. i. Bottom is represented as an ass, and is mistaken by 
the Queen of Faeries for a beautiful young man. 

26, 4. Masque. A form of dramatic entertainment in 
which the actors frequently represented mythological charac- 
ters, and in which the scenes were accompanied and embel- 
lished by music. They were very popular in the 16th and 
17th centuries as written by Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher 
and Milton. 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON MILTON 267 

26, 7-8. the Faithful Shepherdess : a pastoral drama 
by John Fletcher (1579-1626). 

26, 9. the Aminta : a poem by Tasso, the Italian poet 
(1544-1595). Pastor Fido, or the Faithful Swain, is the best 
poem of another Italian poet, Gnarini (1537-1612). 

27, 10. Sir Henry Wotton : (1568-1039), a poet, scholar 
and patron of letters, was an ambassador to Venice in the 
reign of James I., and later Provost of Eton school, where he 
became a neighbor of Milton. See Walton's Lives. 

27, 20. the tragical part: i.e., the dialogue. 
27,21. Dorique: i.e., pastoral. 

28, 7. weeds : garments. Thyrsis was the Shepherd 
whose form the attendant spirit assumed in Comus. The 
name is commonly given to shepherds in Greek pastoral poetry. 

28, 10-11. The quotation is from Comus, 1012-1013. 
28,13. Elysian : pertaining to Elysium, the heaven of 
Greek mythology. 

28, 16. Hesperides : in mythology the three daughters of 
Hesperus, who watched over the wonderful orchards in the 
far west which bore golden fruit. 

28,17. several minor poems: chief among which is 
Lycidas. 

29, 15. the Divine Comedy: most important poem of 
Dante (1265-1321), the greatest of Italian poets. 

29, 23. hieroglyphics. The picture-writings of the Mex- 
ican Indians were rude representations of the objects speci- 
fied. The Egyptian hieroglyphics stood for letters and 
syllables as well as for objects. "Milton's words suggest 
ideas remote from themselves, and his descriptions are not 
intelligible unless you know the inner meanings of his 
words." 



268 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

30, 22. Adige : a mountain stream of great force, rushing 
between the hills of the Brennar pass. 

30, 23. Phlegethon : in Greek mythology a river of the 
lower regions ; literally " the lire river." 

30,24. St. Benedict: near Naples. 

31, 2. Aries : a town near the mouth of the Rhone, in 
France. 

31, 13. Teneriffe: a peak about 1200 feet high on the 
largest of the Canary Islands. Atlas is a mountain of about 
the same height in Morocco. 

31, 14. Contrast with these. See Paradise Lost, XL, 
567, and Inferno, Canto XXIX. 

32, 3. lazar-house : a hospital or pest-house. 

32, 5. Malebolge: "A place in hell, all of stone, and of 
an iron color." 

32, 14-15. Valdichiana . . . Sardinia: places in Italy 
that are especially unhealthy. 

33, 8. Barbariccia and Draghignazzo : two foul fiends 
in Canto XXI., who delight in throwing unfortunate sinners 
into a pit of boiling pitch. 

33, 0. Lucifer: the prince of devils. By climbing up his 
huge sides Dante managed to get out of hell. See Canto 
XXXIV. 

33, 18. Amadis : the popular hero of a prose romance of 
chivalry, Amadis de Gaul, originally written in Portuguese. 
It was afterwards added to in French and Spanish translations. 
Amadis was a model of chivalry, and an ideal knight and 
king. Gulliver : the hero of Gulliver'' s Travels, a satirical work 
by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745). 

36, 11. Theism: the belief in the existence of a god. 

36, 15. Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) wrote the History 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON MILTON. 269 

of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. See chapter xv. 
for his five " causes." 

37, 4-0. Synagogue: i.e., the Jews. Academy: i.e., a 
sect of philosophers headed by Plato, and taught by him in the 
garden of Academos in Athens. Portico: i.e., Stoic philoso- 
phers, pupils of Zeno, who taught under the Stoa Poeeile or 
Painted Portico in Athens. Lictor: the attendant of the 
highest Roman executive officers. He carried before him, to 
clear the way and lend dignity to his office, the fasces — an ax 
in a bundle of rods. 

37, 11-12. St. George: the patron saint of England. 
Mars : the god of war. St. Elmo : the patron saint of Italian 
sailors. The electric light seen, in storms, playing about the 
masts of ships, is known as St. Elmo's fire. By the Romans 
these electric flashes were attributed to Castor and Pollux. 

37, 14-15. Cecilia . . . Venus . . . Muses. Venus, the 
classic goddess of love, was held to have been the mother of 
the Roman people. St. Cecilia, martyred in 230 a.d., became 
the patron saint of church music, supplanting the nine 
muses, the goddesses of music, poetry, and other liberal arts, 
of the ancients. 

40, 19. Don Juan : the hero of Mozart's opera, Don 
Giovanni, who having killed a man asks the statue of the 
dead adversary to dine with him. To his surprise the statue 
comes, and the two have a weird feast, at the close of which 
the spirit statue carries Don Juan off to hell. 

40, 24. Farinata, who spoke to Dante from inside the 
burning tomb. See Inferno, Canto X. 

41, 2. auto da f e : literally, an "act of faith.' 1 In Por- 
tugal and Spain it meant the burning alive of a heretic. 

41, 4. Beatrice Portinari a maiden whom Dante first 



270 MA CAUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

met as a boy of nine. His love for her was so intense that it 
became the poetical inspiration of his life. He never married 
her, however, for she died while still very young. It was she 
who led him through Purgatory, as he relates in the Divine 
Comedy ; who was his great love, his highest aspiration ; all 
lower aims were "lesser loves." It was on account of these 
latter that Beatrice chided him. 

41, 15. Tasso : (1544-151)5) an Italian epic poet. See 
26, 9. 

41, 16. Klopstock: (1724-1803) a German religious poet. 
In his poems, as in those of Tasso, the supernatural beings 
lack the delicacy of portrayal found in Milton. 

42, 12. Osiris : the chief god of Egyptian mythology, and 
the supreme judge and ruler of the kingdom of the dead. 

42, 13. seven-headed idols. In Hindu mythology the 
greater the number of the heads of the gods, the greater was 
their power. 

42, 16. Titans : a race of giants who, in Greek mythology, 
reigned supreme before the coming of Jupiter. With him they 
warred, and by him were overthrown. 

42, 18. Prometheus : one of the Titans who enraged 
Jupiter by making men of clay and then stealing fire from 
heaven with which to animate them. For this Jupiter pun- 
ished him by chaining him to Mt. Caucasus, where eagles and 
vultures fed daily upon his liver, and he was not allowed to die. 

43, 14. Michael: the prince of angels who fought against 
Satan when he rebelled. 

45, 3. the Hebrew poet. Job x. 22. 

45, 9. portraits. A fresco on a wall in the Bargello at 
Florence, said to have been painted by Giotto, is considered 
the best portrait of Dante. 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON MILTON. 271 

46, 14. Satyrs: woodland deities, in Greek mythology, 
and later represented as monsters, half men, half goats. They 
were common attendants upon Bacchus. 

47, 11. time of life: between fifty and sixty years. 

47, 17. Theocritus: (cir. n.c. 280) the greatest Greek 
pastoral poet. Ariosto: (1474-1553) whose Orlando Furioso 
places him among the greatest poets of Italy. 

48, 13. Filicaja. See Note, 164, 20. 

48, 21. that beautiful face refers to Milton's second 
wife, Catherine Woodcock. Macaulay, carried away by his 
enthusiasm, forgets that Milton was blind when he married 
her. See Sonnet XXIII. She is there veiled. 

49, 2. Anthology: a large collection of the best Greek 
short poems by different authors and of different ages. 

49, 5. a collect in verse. See Sonnet XVIII. 

50, 2. Oromasdes and Arimanes : the good and the 
evil spirit of the Persian religion. 

50, 9. American forests refers not merely to the great 
progress made in the Western States of North America, but 
more especially to the establishment of the South American 
republics of Colombia (1810), Peru (1821), Mexico (1823). 

50, 10. roused Greece. When Macaulay wrote this 
Greece was engaged in a war of independence with Turkey, 
which she won in 1829. 

51, 1. the lion in the fable. The fable is this: As a 
man and a lion were walking through a forest each boasting of 
his strength, they came upon a statue of a man strangling a 
lion. " See how strong man is," said the traveler, " and how 
he can overcome even the king of beasts." To this the lion 
answered, " If lions knew how to make statues you would see 
the man under the lion's paw." 



272 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

53, 11. William Laud (157&-1645), Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, was a great enemy of the Puritans and the champion 
of High Church and Ritualism. 

54, 22. One sect: i.e., the Roman Catholics. 

55, 1. One part of the empire: i.e., Ireland. 

55, 10. Divine Right: i.e., of kings,, the doctrine that 
the king stands toward his people in loco parentis, deriving his 
authority, not from the consent of the governed, but directly 
from God. This doctrine was especially developed under the 
Stuarts. 

55, 14. William: i.e., William III., Prince of Orange. 

55, 14, 15. Somers and Shrewsbury : Lord Chancellor 
and Secretary of State in the reign of William III. 

55, 18. Jacobite : the name given to the adherents of 
James and his principles. 

55, 20. St. George's Channel : the sea between England 
and Ireland. 

56, 1. Ferdinand the Catholic: (1452-1516) Ferdi- 
nand V. of Spain. 

56, 2. Frederick the Protestant: (1596-1632) Freder- 
ick V., Elector Palatine ; head of the Protestant princes of 
Germany ; son-in-law of James I. 

56, 12. Goldsmith's Abridgment. Oliver Goldsmith 
(1728-1774), author of the Vicar of Wakefield, wrote an 
abridged history of England. 

57, 16, 17. from his accession to . . . the Long Par- 
liament: i.e., from 1625-1640. The Long Parliament is so 
called because it extended from 1640 to 1680, though it was 
temporarily suspended by Cromwell in 1653. 

57, 23. the Declaration of Right: "a document as- 
serting the ancient rights and liberties of the English people." 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON MILTON. 27 S 

William and Mary were offered the crown on condition that 
they would truly observe all of its clauses. 

58, 20. The ship-money : one of the many offensive 
taxes levied by Charles I. in order to raise money. Headed 
by John Hampden, the people made a firm stand against this 
grievance, and the tax was taken off. 

58, 21. The Star Chamber: a court consisting of mem- 
bers of the Privy Council and two chief justices. It gradually 
usurped the power of punishing any real or imaginary con- 
tempt for the authority of the king ; and its actions were ex- 
tremely unjust, tyrannical, and often almost inquisitorial. It 
received its name from the room in which it met. 

60, 2, 3. the Petition of Right. (1028). " A bill con- 
demning Charles's illegal practices, arbitrary taxes, imprison- 
ments," etc., and forbidding taxation without the consent of 
Parliament. 

60, 22. le Roi le veut : i.e., the king wishes it. When 
bills are passed by Parliament it is the custom, even to-day, for 
the assent of the king to be given by an officer in these words. 
The use of French, instead of English, has survived from the 
12th and 13th centuries, when French was the language of the 
Court. 

62, 15. Vandyke : so called from a Flemish painter, 
Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1041), who resided in England dur- 
ing the latter years of his life, and made many portraits of 
Charles and his Court. 

63, 15. the Tudors :^ sovereigns of England, so called 
from their ancestor, Owen Tudor, Earl of Richmond. They 
include Henry VII., son of Owen Tudor, Henry VIII.. Ed- 
ward VI., Mary and Elizabeth. 

64, 13. The Earl of Strafford was a tool of Charles in 



274 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

his tyrannical and arbitrary government. He was beheaded 
in 164T. See Browning's tragedy. 

64, 22. Fifth-monarchy men. They belonged to a sect 
which sprang out of Puritanism, and believed that Christ was 
about to return again to the earth and establish his kingdom 
among men. They therefore believed themselves bound to 
prepare, by force if necessary, the way for his coming. The 
four other kingdoms were Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome. 

64, 24. Agag : a cruel king of the Amalekites, whom 
Samuel hewed to pieces. See 1 Samuel, ch. xv. 33. 

65, 7. despotic sceptres. In the first edition of this 
essay Macaulay wrote "the Sceptres of Brandenburgh and 
Braganza ; " i.e., Prussia and Portugal. 

66, 24. the Rhine or the Xeres. The valley of the 
Rhine is famous for its vineyards. Xeres is not a river but a 
town of Andalusia in Spain.* The country about is noted for 
its wine. Sherry takes its name from this place. 

70, 24. Jeffreys : a coarse and brutal judge, who lived in 
the reigns of Charles IT. and James IT. His name will ever be 
associated with the "Bloody Assizes," at which no less than 
320 persons were condemned to death. 

71, 3. the Boy ne : a small river in the north of Ireland. 
The battle of the Boyne (1690), which practically put an end to 
the hopes of James II., was fought between William III. and 
Schoinberg on one side, and James and Sarsfield on the other. 

71, 18. heir . . . nephew and his two daughters. 
The first was the Pretender, who claimed the throne as James 
ITT., and led a rebellion in 1715. His nephew was William 
III., son of Mary, sister of James II. His two daughters were 
Mary, wife of William III., and Anne, queen of England after 
the death of William. 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON MILTON. 275 

*71. 21. the fifth of November : the clay on which Wil- 
liam III. landed in England, 1088. 

72, 1. the thirtieth of January, the day on which 
Charles I. was executed, 1649. Both these days were for- 
merly observed by the Church of England, but the services 
were taken out of the prayer book by command of Queen 
Victoria (1859). 

73, 16. Salmasius: a French scholar authorized by 
Charles II. to write a defense of his father, Charles I. The 
book was called Defensio Regis. Milton was selected by the 
Commonwealth leaders to answer this book, which he did iu 
his Defensio Populi. See Sketch of Milton. 

73,21. iEneae magni dextra, (cadis). " Thou f allest 
by the right hand of the great vEneas." Vergil, ^En. x. 830. 

75, 11. stadtholder: the chief governor of the Dutch 
Republic. 

75, 21. Bolivar freed the South American colonies from 
Spanish misrule and oppression. 

76, 22. the Stuarts : sovereigns of England from 160o- 
1688. They include, James I., Charles I., Charles II., and 
James II. 

78, 8. Independents : seceders from the Presbyterians 
who were in favor of free and independent church worship 
ami against a general church government for the country. 

78, 20. his rival: i.e. Louis XIV. of France. 

79, 5. Anathema Maranatha. The first word is Greek 
for " curse " ; the second is Syriac for " our Lord cometh." 
Together they are used as a form of denunciation. 

79, 7. Belial and Moloch: the devil and "the god of 
the Ammonites, to whom, in sacrifice, children were made to 
pass through tire." 



276 MACAULAT'S ESSAYS. 

80, 13. Cromwell was made Lord Protector in 1653, and 
died in 1658. 

82, 1-4. See Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered, XV. 57 ff. 

" This is the source of laughter and this the stream 
Which contains mortal perils in itself: 
Now here to hold in check our desire 
And to be very cautious, becomes us." 

82, 23. See Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, Act. II., 
Sc. vii. , Act II., Sc. ix., Act III., Sc. ii. 

86, 1. Beatific Vision : a direct and face-to-face sight of 
God surrounded by his saints and angels and all the beauties 
and the glories of heaven. 

86, 2. Sir Henry Vane (1613-1662) was a prominent 
politician, and a leader of the Parliamentary side during the 
Civil War. He was a mystic and fanatical Puritan given to 
extravagant speculations. In 1636-37 he was governor of 
Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was executed in 1662 by 
command of Charles II. as a regicide. 

86, 4. Charles Fleetwood : a leader of the Parliamen- 
tary forces, who married Cromw ell's daughter. 

87, 2. Stoics : a sect that taught that man should never 
give way to any passion ; should be unmoved alike by happi- 
ness or sorrow. See note on p. 37, 11. 4-6. 

87, 8. Sir Artegal's iron man Talus : A brazen man 
made by Vulcan to guard the island of Crete. Spenser 
(Faerie Queene, Bk. V.) makes him the attendant of Artegal 
(who impersonates Justice), and depicts him as constantly run- 
ning around the island administering correction and chastise- 
ment to offenders by flooring them with an iron flail. 

87, 24. crusades: the religious wars waged in the 11th, 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON MILTON. 277 

12th, and 13th centuries by the Christian kings and nations of 
Europe against the Mohammedans of the East. These wars 
were undertaken not only to rescue the Holy Land from the 
Saracens, but also as penances for sins. The word is derived 
from " crux " a cross, under which badge the Christians fought. 

88, 1. Dun stan: Archbishop of Canterbury, circa 959. 
He was famous for his austerity, intolerance, his efforts to 
put the Anglo-Saxon church under the power of Rome, and 
for his influence over Edgar, his king. De Montfort : a 
French nobleman, father of Simon de Montfort, famous for his 
cruel crusade in 1238, against the Albigenses who attempted 
to break from the church of Rome. Dominic: (1170-1271) 
a Spaniard who founded the Dominican order of monks, called 
also Black-Friars. Like De Montfort he was austere and 
cruel, and took severe measures to punish heretics. 

88, 2. Escobar : (1589-1669) a Spanish Jesuit and writer 
upon morals. Macaulay undoubtedly refers to the strictness 
and austerity of his life. 

88, 13. doubting Thomases. See St. John xx.. 24. 

88, 14. careless Gallios. See Acts xviii. 17. 

88, 20. Brissotines, afterwards called Girondists, were 
advocates of moderation in the French Revolution, led by 
J. Pierre Brissot. They were defeated and their leader 
executed in the Reign of Terror of 1793. 

89, 7. Whitefriars : a district of London, so-called from 
a monastery of the White-Friars established there in 1241. 

89, 15. Cavaliers: i.e., the adherents of Charles I. 

89,19. Janissaries: the militia of Turkey. It is said 
that they were at first children stolen from Christian parents. 
Later they became the body-guard of the sultan. In 1826 
they had become so formidable and uncontrollable that they 
were abolished. 



278 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

90, 9. Duessa. See Spenser's Faerie Queene, (Bk. I.) 
Duessa (or Falsehood) was a witch who assumed the character 
and appearance of Una (signifying Truth) and enticed her 
champion, the Red-Cross Knight, into the House of Pride 
where she held him prisoner. 

90, 23. the Round Table : the table at which King 
Arthur and his knights were accustomed to sit and hold sol- 
emn feasts. (Read Tennyson's "Idylls of the King" for a 
most beautiful version of the old romances of King Arthur and 
his knights.) 

91, 12. conventicle: i.e., an assembly. It was espe- 
cially applied to the secret meetings for religious worship held 
by the Scottish Covenanters and the dissenters, when they were 
persecuted for their faith in the reign of diaries II. Gothic 
cloister here stands for monastery or abbey. 

91, 20. From Milton's Sonnet VII., on his twenty-third 
birthday. 

92, 10-20. hero of Homer : Ulysses, hero of the Odyssey, 
who when sailing by the cave of the Sirens, had himself bound 
to the mast of the ship so that he might enjoy their songs and 
beauty without being drawn by them to his death. 

92, 24. Circe was an enchantress who had power to change 
into animals all who entered her palace and drank of her cup. 
She thus transformed twenty-two of Ulysses' followers into 
swine ; but he himself she was powerless to change, for Mer- 
cury had given him a magic herb which made him proof against 
her cup. 

93, 9. in the Penseroso. Read the twelve beautiful 
lines, beginning : — 

" But let my due feet never fail 
To walk the studious cloisters pale." 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON MILTON. 279 

93, 16. Othello, the hero of Shakspere's play of the same 
name, led by Iago to believe Desdemona, his wife, untrue, 
murdered her, though he loved her truly, because he thought 
his honor demanded this satisfaction. 

93, 23. hierarchy : the body of persons in whom is con- 
fided the government of sacred things. It means here the 
clergy of the church of England. 

94, 10. the liberty of the press. See Milton's Areo- 
pagitica, a noble defense of this liberty. 

95, 1-5. The quotation is from Comus, 815-819. 

95, 18. the Presbyterian -wolf. See Milton's Sonnet to 
Cmmwell. 

" Help us to save free conscience from the paw, 
Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw." 1 

95, 22. frontlets : strips of parchment inscribed with cer- 
tain texts from the Old Testament, and inclosed in a small 
leather case which was fastened with a strap, and worn by the 
Jews on the forehead just above and between the eyes. See 
Exod. xiii. 16 ; Deut. vi. 8, and xi. 18. 

97, 3. regicide. The first edition adds : "He ridiculed 
the Eikon." 

97, 5. the god of light: i.e., Phoebus, who describes his 
climbing up against the contrary motion of the swift-moving 
world in the lines " Nitor in adversum," etc. "I struggle 
against opposition ; nor can I be conquered by the force which 
conquers all else ; against the swift motion of the heavens I 
ride on." See Ovid's MetamorpJwses II., 72, 73. 

97, 15. Edmund Burke: (1729-1797) an English politi- 
cal writer and a powerful orator, whose prose is famous for its 

splendor and force. 

1 Maw, i.e., stomach. 



280 MACAU LAY'S ESSAYS. 

97, 23. " a seven-fold chorus," etc. The quotation is 
from Milton's The Reason of Church Government urged against 
Prelacy. Book II. For criticisms of Milton's style see essays 
on Milton by Arnold and Lowell. 

98, 5, the Iconoclast, or Image Breaker, was written by 
Milton in answer to a work attributed to Charles I., entitled 
Eikon Basilike, or Portrait of his sacred Majesty in his Soli- 
tudes and Sufferings. 

98, 7. the Treatise and the Animadversions were 
two of Milton's pamphlets of the year 1641, written in favor 
of the abolition of episcopacy. 

99, 14. Thomas Ellwood: (1639-1713) a firm friend of 
Milton in his old age, and a frequent visitor at his house, 
where he used often to read to the blind old poet. In 1005 
Milton showed him the manuscript of Paradise Lost. After 
reading it at leisure, at his own house, Ellwood returned it 
to Milton saying, — "Thou hast here said much of Paradise 
Lost but what hast thou to say of Paradise found ? " It was 
to this question, says Milton, that we owe Paradise Regained. 

100, 1. Boswellism. James Boswell was an intimate 
friend and the biographer of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Boswell 
worshipped his hero to the verge of weakness, and his biography, 
though masterly, is often weak through blind devotion and 
flattery . 

100, 14. the Virgin Martyr. Philip Massinger (1583- 
1040), an Elizabethan dramatist, wrote among other plays one 
called the Virgin Martyr, in which an unbeliever mocks the 
faith of the heroine who is martyred for her belief, and chal- 
lenges her to send down a flower from the heaven whither she 
asserts she is going. This she does, for after her death an 
angel brings upon the stage a basket of flowers and fruit. 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY OK" 
ADDISOJST 



Whigs and Tories. — As those two political parties are so 
frequently mentioned by Macaulay in this essay, the student 
would do well to consult Lecky's History of England in the 
XVIII. Century, vol. L, ch. 1. He says in part: k 'The main 
object of the Whig party in the early part of the eighteenth 
century was to establish in England a system of government 
in winch the will of the people as expressed by Parliament 
should be supreme, and the power of the monarch should be 
subject to the limitations it imposed. The substitution of a 
parliamentary title for divine right as the basis of the throne. 
and the assertion of the right of the nation to depose a dy- 
nasty which had transcended the limits of the constitution, 
were the great principles for which the Whigs were contend- 
ing. . . . The Tory party, on the other hand, under Queen 
Anne was to a great extent, and under George I. almost exclu- 
sively Jacobite. The overwhelming majority of its members 
held fervently the doctrines of the divine right of kings and 
of the sinfulness of all resistance, and they accordingly re- 
garded the power of Parliament as altogether subordinate to 
that of a legitimate king.'" 

103. Lucy Aikin (1781-1804) made her reputation chiefly 

281 



282 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

by her historical works, which were Memoirs of the Court of 
Queen Elizabeth 1818 ; Memoirs of the Court of King James 
I., 1822; Memoirs of the Court of Charles I., 1833; and The 
Life of Joseph Addison, 1843. 

103, 14. the courteous knight refers to Rogero, a charac- 
ter in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, who was forced to fight a 
duel with Bradamante, a woman disguised as a man. To 
avoid hurting her he exchanged his magic sword " Baiisarda " 
for one less deadly. 

104, 18. Laputan flapper. See Gulliver's Travels by 
Swift, Part III., chap. ii. In the flying island of Laputa, 
Gulliver found the people so absent-minded by reason of deep 
thinking that it was customary for the great men of the 
country to employ boys, carrying "flappers" made of blad- 
ders, to strike them on the head, and so arouse them when 
their attention was required. 

105, 10. Theobald's was a palace near London used as a 
residence by Burleigh, Lord High Treasurer under Queen 
Elizabeth, and later as a private hunting seat by James I. 

105. 11. Steenkirks : large, loose neckties. After the 
defeat of the French at the battle of Steenkirk (1692), these 
ties became popular in England, and were worn to commemo- 
rate the negligent dress of the French officers who had been 
taken by surprise. 

105, 13. Hampton: Hampton Court Palace, about twelve 
miles from London. 

106, 7. a hundred and twenty years. Addison died 
in 1710. Westminster Abbey : in London, built by Edward 
the Confesor in 1040-05. It was rebuilt by Henry III. and 
Edward I., and now stands substantially as they left it. The 
abbey contains the tombs of most of England's sovereigns, 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON ADDISON. 283 

besides those of a host of other celebrated persons. The last 
great honor that England can pay her dead is to bnry them 
within the walls of Westminster Abbey. 

106, 18. Thomas Parnell : (1679-1718) a minor poet of 
the reign of Queen Anne, whose chief work is The Hermit. 

106, 10. Hugh Blair: (1718-1800) a Scotch preacher, and 
an 18th century authority on rhetoric. His criticisms, espe- 
cially those in connection with the genuineness of Ossian's 
poems, were faulty. 

106, 20. Johnson wrote a tragedy called Irene. See note 
to Milton, 7, 13. 

106,21. high department of literature: i.e., the writ- 
ing of essays, such as the papers of the Tatler and the 
Sj:C'-tator. 

107, 6. Button's, a London coffee-house frequented by 
Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift, and other wits and literary men 
of their time. Letters were frequently left here for the 
Spectator, being dropped into the mouth of a lion erected to 
receive them. 

108, 1"). Wild of Sussex: formerly an immense forest 
in the .south-eastern part of England. 

108, 17. Dunkirk: a town in north-eastern France which 
Charles 11. sold to Louis XIV. in 1661. 

108, 19. Tangier, the port of Morocco, was given to 
Charles II. as part of the dower of Catharine of Braganza, 
in 1662. 

109, 11. Rabbinical Learning: the teaching of the Tal- 
mud and of the Jewish law. 

109, 16. the Revolution: i.e., of 1688, when William 
of Orange ascended the English throne. 

109, 10. John Tillotson: (1630-1694) Archbishop of Can- 



284 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

terbury in 1691. He had a seat in the Council, and was King 
William's chief adviser in matters of church government. 

109, 24. Charter House : a celebrated London school 
founded in 1611. It was removed to Surrey in 1687. 

110, 22. Magdalene College (pronounced Maudlin), the 
wealthiest of the twenty-three colleges that go to make up 
Oxford University. 

111,6,7. his chancellor : judge Jeffreys. See Macaulay's 
History, vol. iii., ch. 8. 

111, 13. a Papist. The right of electing a president lay 
with the Fellows of the college, and a Roman Catholic was 
ineligible. John Hough, Bp. of Coventry, had been elected 
by the Fellows ; but he and they were expelled by James II., 
who appointed a Roman Catholic, one Anthony Farmer, to be 
president. Not insisting, however, on the appointment of 
Farmer, James ordered Parker, Bp. of Oxford, to be installed 
president, and appointed twelve Romanists as Fellows. 

112, 12. Demies: students who hold scholarships at Mag- 
dalene College. At all other Oxford colleges the holders of 
scholarships are called " scholars. " The word "Demy" is 
abbreviated from " demi-socius," a half-fellow. 

113.10. Lucretius: (b.c. 95-51) a Roman philosopher 
and poet. Catullus: (b.c 87-47) a writer of epigrams and 
love poems. Claudian: (b. about a.d. 365) the last of the 
classic Latin poets. 

113.11. Prudentius : (b. a.i>. 348) one of the earliest 
Christian poets. 

113, 17. George Buchanan: (1506-1582) a native of 
Scotland, renowned as an historian and a writer of Latin 
poetry. He taught both in Scotland and on the Continent, 
and was at one time tutor to Mary Queen of Scots. 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON ADDISON. 285 

114, 8, 9. Eton and Rugby: celebrated English schools. 

114, 14. Notice the live arguments that Macaulay gives to 
prove that Addison's knowledge of Greek and of Latin prose 
was not large. Mr. Courthope ("English Men of Letters.*' 
Addison, p. 28) disagrees with Macaiday in regard to Addi- 
son's knowledge of Greek. 

114, 16. Metamorphoses: the chief poetical work of 
Ovid (b.c. 43-a.d. 17). It comprises 15 books, which arc 
mainly devoted to the love episodes of the gods. 

114, 20. Statius : (45-96) a Latin poet, author of Thelitis, 
an epic poem in 12 books. 

115, 1. Pentheus, king of Thebes, opposed the worship of 
Bacchus. In revenge the god caused him to be torn in pieces 
by his mother and two aunts who discovered him secretly 
watching them as they worshipped. Both Theocritus, a Syra- 
cusan pastoral poet born about b.c. 290, and Euripides (b.c 
480), one of the three great Greek tragedians, relate this story 
of Pentheus. 

115, 13. Ausonius (b. a.i>. 310) and Manilius were 
Latin poets. 

115, 22. Hannibal: (b.c. 247-183), the famous Cartha- 
ginian general, who, with 59,000 soldiers, unsuccessfully at- 
tempted to capture Rome. After crossing the Pyrenees, his 
army had been reduced by hardships and by attacks from the 
enemy to barely 26,000 men. 

115, 24. Polybius : (b.c 204-122) a Greek historian. 

116, 1. Livy: (b.c 59-a.d. 17) the celebrated Roman 
historian, whose chief work is Histories, or Annates Rerum Ro- 
manorum ab Urbe condita, in 142 books. Silius Italicus 
(a. i). 25-100) wrote an epic poem on the Second Punic War. 

116, 3, Plutarch (d. a.d. 120) wrote the lives of eminent 



286 MACAULATS Ebb AYS. 

Greeks and Romans. In his life of Csesar he describes his 
crossing of the Rubicon. 

116,4. the Commentaries: i.e., of Caesar, which are 
noted for their clearness and the purity of their Latin. 

116, 5. letters to Atticus : i.e., from Cicero. 

116, 12. Pindar (b.c. 520-b.c. 450) and Callimachus 
(b.c. 256) were Greek poets. 

116, 14. Horace: (b.c 65) a celebrated Latin poet and a 
friend of Virgil, Augustus, and Meecenus. Juvenal : (about 
a.d. 80) the last Roman poet of distinction. 

117, 15. Cock-Lane ghost. A certain house in Cock- 
Lane, London, was supposed to have been haunted by a ghost, 
but upon investigation it was found that the spirit was nothing 
more than a little girl at play. See Foster's Life of Goldsmith. 

117, 16. Vortigern and Rowena was a play purporting to be 
Sli akspere's, forged by Samuel William Ireland (1777-1885). 

117, 17. Thundering Legion. In the battle between 
Marcus Aurelius and the Quadi and Marcomaimi a.d. 174, a 
legion composed of Christians in the Imperial Roman army, 
suffering severely from want of water, fell on their knees and 
prayed for rain. Immediately a thunder-storm broke over 
them, and not only supplied the necessary water, but caused 
great damage to the enemy. Hence this legion was afterward 
called the Thundering Legion. 

117,18. Tiberius: (b.c. 42-a.d. 37) second emperor of 
Rome. 

117, 20. Agbarus, was said by Eusebius, an early Chris- 
tian father, to have received a letter from Christ. 

118, 5. Herodotus. See note to 23, 15. 

118, 8. Charles Boyle, Earl of Orrery (1676-1731), pub- 
lished an edition of the Letters of Phalaris, in 1695. 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON ADDISON. 287 

118, 19. Sir Rich. Blackmore (d. 1729) was a physician 
and a voluminous writer of prose and verse most of which was 
poor. 

119, 1. Richard Bentley (1662-1742) was head of Trinity 
College, Cambridge, and an eminent philologian. He engaged 
in a controversy with Boyle, and proved beyond doubt, in his 
Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris, that these Epistles 
were written not in the sixth century B.C., as was believed, but 
in the second century a.d. This work, published in 1699 
marks the beginning of a new era in scholarship. 

119,21. breakfast tables : a reference to the Spectator, 
the daily paper which Addison and Steele started March 1. 
1712. Swift. See note to 33, 18. 

120, 2. Lilliput: one of the imaginary countries visited by 
Gulliver in his travels. Its inhabitants were dwarfs. 

120, 11-14. 

" High in the midst the chieftain dwarf was seen, 
Of giant stature and imperial mien ; 
Full twenty inches tall he strode along. 
And viewed with lofty eye the wondering throng." 

120, 18. coffee-houses, in the 18th century, took the place 
of modern clubs. In these houses, whose number was enormous, 
the wits, literary men, and politicians met daily to drink their 
cup of coffee and talk over the topics of the day. 

120, 22. John Dryden (1631-1700) was a celebrated Eng- 
lish dramatic and satiric poet, and poet-laureate from 1668- 
1688. Addison in a short poem complimented him on the 
excellence of his translation of Virgil (1697). See note to 20,8. 

121. 4. Congreve: (1670-1729), one of the most brilliant 
and witty of the Restoration dramatists. Montagu, lord of 
the Treasury, was his earliest patron. 



288 MAC AULA Y'S ESSAYS. 

121, 11. fourth Georgic. Virgil's Georgics, four in 
number, deal with farm and agricultural subjects. 

121, 16. the Newdigate Prize, so called after its founder. 
Sir Roger Newdigate, is given yearly at Oxford for the best 
poem in English verse by an undergraduate, on an assigned 
subject. 

121, 17. the Seatonian prize is given yearly at Cam- 
bridge for the best poem in English verse, on a sacred 
subject. 

121, 18. heroic couplet : iambic pentameter lines in 
rhymed pairs, as, — 

" Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, 
The proper study of mankind is man." 

122, 5. Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was the most emi- 
nent poet and satirist of the classical school of the 18th 
century. Most of his works are written in the heroic couplet. 
His Pastorals appeared in 1709. 

122, 16, 17. Rochester (1648-1680), Marvel (1621-1678, 
and Oldham (1653-1683) wrote at times in the heroic couplet, 
but their lines, compared with those of Pope, are decidedly 
harsh. 

122, 19. Ben Jonson: (1573-1637) one of the greatest of 
English dramatists. John Hoole (1727-1803) translated into 
English verse Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered and Ariosto's Orlando 
Furioso. 

123, 1. Brunei (1806-1859) was an eminent civil engineer 
who designed the famous ship, the "Great Eastern." The 
allusion here is to a machine invented by him for turning out 
blocks, for pulleys of exactly the same shape and size. 

123, 5. iEneid, IV., 178 ff. 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON ADDISON. 289 

125, 4. "After his bees.'* The culture of bees forms 
the subject of the fourth George. 

125, 14-15. an honorable place. Dr. Addison was at 
this time Dean of Lichfield. Montague: See note to 9, 5. 

126, 1. Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset (1(338-1706), 
besides being a courtier and a patron of letters, wrote some 
very good songs and satires. 

126, 4. Rasselas. The story is told in Rasselas, 1759, the 
only novel written by Dr. Johnson. 

127,4. John Somers : (1051-1710) a distinguished Whig 
statesman who became chancellor at the time of the Revolution, 
having strenuously opposed James II. 

128, 3. Revolution of July 1830. This French revolu- 
tion drove out Charles X. and put Louis Philippe on the throne. 

128, 0-7. At the present moment, i.e., 1843. 

128, 10, 17. Somersets and Shrewsburies. Charles 
Seymour, Duke of Somerset (1000-1748), and Charles Talbot, 
Duke of Shrewsbury (1000-1717) were both eminent statesmen 
and influential patrons of men of letters. The meaning of the 
line is that France "had no great houses to counterbalance 
literary talent," or perhaps that in France literary men were 
freer from patrons who used their talents for political purposes 
and thus kept down their best productions. 

129, 5. peace of Ryswick, signed at Ryswick in Hol- 
land in 1097, was a treaty between France on one side, and 
England, Germany, Spain, and Holland on the other, one 
clause of which stipulated that Louis XIV. should recognize 
William III. as King of England. 

■ 130, "20. a toast. " A word applied in Addison's time to 
a reigning beauty, whose health it was the fashion to drink." 
See The Tatler, No. 24. 



290 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

130, 24. Kit Cat Club : a Whig club in London, said to 
have taken its name from Christopher Katt, a pastry cook who 
kept the house. It was the custom for members of the club, 
in drinking a toast, to compose some lines in her honor, which 
were then engraved upon the wine glasses. Addison thus 
toasted the Countess of Manchester. 

131,10. Jean Racine: (1639-1699) one of the greatest 
French dramatists. Before 1(577 he wrote several plays of 
which the best are " Andromaque " and " Britanicns." In 
1689 he began to write sacred plays, and produced "Esther" 
and -' Athalie." 

131, 12. Andre Dacier: (1651-1722) a celebrated French 
scholar who edited some of the classics for the Dauphin. 
Athanasian mysteries : a reference to the Athanasian 
creed still used on certain days in the Church of England. 
Dacier, who had become a Roman Catholic, was trying to find 
in Plato a confirmation of his belief in this creed. 

132, 3. Joseph Spence : (1699-1768) an English divine, 
at one time professor of poetry, and later of history, at Ox- 
ford. He is now chiefly remembered as the collector of a vol- 
ume of valuable anecdotes of prominent men he had met. 

132, 13. Guardian: a periodic paper written by Steele and 
Addison after the close of the Spectator. See Nos. 101 and 
104. 

132, 23. Nicolas de Malebranche (1638-1715) was a dis- 
tinguished French theologian and philosopher. 

132,24. Nicholas Boileau: (1636-1711) a French literary 
lawgiver. He first studied law. then theology, and finally 
became a man of letters and a great critic. His chief work 
is i, 1 Art Poetique, a treatise on literary criticism which exerted 
a great influence on English taste. 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON ADDISON. L )l Jl 

133, 1. Newton : See Note 9, 8. 

133, 2. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1070) was one of the 
earliest of English philosophers. He held that power or 
"force was the only foundation of right," and that, therefore, 
absolute power should be given to one person in order to hold 
others in check. His system of philosophy is embodied in his 
great work called the Leviathan. 

133, 22. Leicester square, in London. Sir Joshua 
Reynolds (1723-1702) was the first president of the British 
Royal Academy, and is generally considered the foremost por- 
trait painter of England. 

133, 23. Mrs. Thrale (1741-1821), better known as Mrs. 
Piozzi, was a friend of Dr. Johnson. At her house at 
Streatham, a suburb of London," Johnson had a room for 
sixteen years, set apart for his use. See BoswelPs Life of 
Johnson under the years 1778 and 1782. 

133. 24. Christopher Martin Wieland (1733-1813) was 
a distinguished German poet and Professor of Philosophy and 
Literature at the University of Erfurt and later of Weimar. 
Besides writing poetry and philosophical romances, he trans- 
lated Shakspere into German. 

134. 1. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1720-1781) was not 
only an eminent German critic, but a distinguished dramatist 
as well. His chief plays are " Minna von Barnhelm," " Emilia 
Galotti," and "Nathan der Weise." His literary and art 
criticisms and ideas are embodied in his Laocoon or "Treatise 
on the limits of Painting and Poetry," 17G5. 

135. 11. Augustine age. See note to 16, 12. 

135. 16. Pollio (b.c. 76-a. d.4), a friend of Virgil and 
Horace, was an eminent orator of the Augustine age. 
135. 10. Frederick the Great of Prussia (1712-1786) 



292 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

not only was a patron of the great French writers, Voltaire, 
Diderot, and others, but even wrote his own works almost 
entirely in French. 

136, 5. Disiderius Erasmus : (1467-1536) a great Dutch 
theologian and a fine writer of Latin. He was one of the most 
learned men of his time ; and though he took no very active 
part in the Reformation of the Church, he was one of the 
leaders in the Revival of Learning. 

136, 6. Girolamo Fracastorius. (1483-1558) an Italian 
physician and poet whose best works are poems written in very 
elegant Latin. 

136, 6, 7. William Robertson (1721-1793) was a Scotch 
historian, whose best work, written in clear, straightforward 
English, is the well known History of Charles V. 

136, 13. Thomas Gray (1716-1771), an English poet who 
wrote chiefly odes and elegies, the most famous of which is the 
Elegu written in a Country Church-yard. 

136, 18. elegiacs, i.e., couplets of alternate hexameter and 
pentameter lines. 

136, 14. Vincent Bourne (1605-1747) was a very clever 
English writer of Latin poems, whose verse Cowper ranked 
with that of Ovid. 

136, 18-22. " Do not think, however, that I wish by that 
to find fault with the Latin verses (which you sent me) of one 
of your illustrious academicians. I found them very beautiful 
and worthy of Vida and of Sannazar, but not of Horace and 
of Virgil." 

137,2. Pere Fraguier: (1666-1728) a Parisian Jesuit 
and a man of considerable learning. 

137, 12-14. "Why, Muse, doest thou bid me, born of a 
Sigambrian father, far on this side of the Alps, to lisp in 
Latin numbers ? " 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON ADDISON. 293 

137, 16, 17. Machinae Gesticulantes (Marionettes) and 
Gerano-Pygmaeomachia (Battle of the Cranes and Pyg- 
mies) are two Latin poems by Addison. 

138, 15. an event, which led up to the war of the Span- 
ish succession in 1700. 

139, 16. Ligurian coast: the coast of Italy from near 
Marseilles to Genoa. 

140, 3. capuchin. See note to 5, 16. 

140, 8. "How are thy servants," etc. See Spectator 
No. 489. The first stanza is as follows: 

" How are thy servants blest, O Lord ! 
How sure is their defence ! 
Eternal wisdom is their guide, 
Their help Omnipotence." 

140, 17. Book of Gold: i.e., register of Nobles. 

141, 5. the Carnival, extends nominally from January 
7, to Ash Wednesday. 

141, 11. Cato (b. b.c. 95), a Roman general and Scipio 
his second in command, both joined with Poinpey in the war 
against Caesar. At the battle of Thapsus, when Pompey was 
defeated, Cato killed himself. 

141, 16. a Plutarch and a Tasso. It should be re- 
membered that the first of these authors was born a.d. 45, and 
the other a.d. 1544. 

142, 24. St. Peter's: the great Roman Catholic Ca- 
thedral of the Vatican, rebuilt between 1505 and 1626 from 
designs by Michel Angelo and others, 

143, 1. the Pantheon: built b.c 27 by Agrippa, and 
in 1610 consecrated a church by Pope Boniface IV. 

143, 2. Holy Week: i.e., the week before Easter, which 



294 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

in Rome is marked by magnificent ceremonies in all the 
churches. 

143, 18. Appian Way : a road between Rome and 
Capua, so called because begun about 813 b.c. by Appius 
Claudius Csecus. 

143, 22. Herculaneum : an immense theatre accommo- 
dating 8,000 people, built at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius. It was 
burned, together with the city of Pompeii, by the eruption of 
the volcano in 79. The city was discovered in 1689; the 
theatre in 1711. See Bulwer-Lytton's novel, The Last Bays 
of Pompeii. 

143, 24. Paestum : a town on the coast, south of Pom- 
peii, noted for three beautiful Doric temples. 

144, 5. Salvator Rosa : (1615-1673) a distinguished 
Italian landscape and historical painter. 

144,6. Vico: (1068-1744) an Italian philosopher who is 
credited with having first taught the philosophy of history. 

144, 8, 9, Cities ... of Yucatan. More than sixty 
ruined cities dating from pre-historic times have been found 
in the wilds of Yucatan, a district in the south-east of 
Mexico. 

144, 11. Tunnel of Posilipo : an excavation near Naples 
in the solid volcanic soil. Its east entrance was near the tomb 
of Virgil. 

144, 12. Capreae, i.e., an island near Naples. 

144, 18. Philip V., king of Spain, 1700. 

144, 19. Castile and Aragon, provinces of Spain. 

145, 3. Jacobitism, the principles of those who adhered 
to James II. and the Stuart family after his abdication. " They 
vindicated the doctrine of passive obedience and non-re- 
sistance." 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON ADDISON. 295 

145, 3, 4. Freeholder : a political periodical written by 
Addison, 1716. 

145, 9. Felucca : a small two-inasted vessel, propelled 
either by sails or oars, used in the Mediterranean. 

145, 11. Misenus was the trumpeter and steersman of 
iEneas, who was drowned and buried at this headland, now 
called Cape Misena. See Virgil, iEneid VI., 162 and 235. 
Circe. See note to 92, 24. 

145, 23. Ostia : the port of Rome at the mouth of the 
Tiber. 

145, 23. poured forth . . . gratitude. See Note to 
25, 10. 

146, 12. Duke of Shrewsbury. He was chamberlain 
of James II. and Secretary of State under William III. in 
1689. In 1690 he entered into a secret engagement with the 
Jacobites. In 1696 his treason of 1690 was discovered. He 
was forgiven by King William, but retired first to the country 
and then to Italy. Under Queen Anne he became ambassa- 
dor to France. 

147, 7. Prince Francis Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736), 
who won distinction in 1697 at the battle of Zentha when 
the Austrians with whom he fought defeated the Turks, and 
again during the war of the Spanish succession when in 1701 
he defeated Catinat, a French Marshal commanding the 
army in Italy, and drove the French out of Italy. In 1704 
he fought in the allied army with Marlborough at the 
famous battle of Blenheim.' 

147, 10. The faithless Ruler of Savoy was Victor 
Amadeus II., who in 1692 commanded the Austrian troops 
against France, but being bribed went over to Louis XIV. In 
1703 he again went back to the Austrians. 



296 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

147, 14. the Grand Alliance of England, Austria, Hol- 
land, Denmark and Sweden, against France, to prevent the 
union of the crowns of France and of Spain in one person. 

147, 18. Mont Cenis : in the Alps. Napoleon made a 
road over it in 1802. 

148, 14. the death of Dryden : i.e., 1700. Pope's Essay 
on Criticism, 1709. 

149, 17. the death of William: i.e., Mar. 8, 1702. 

149, 22. deprived of the seals : i.e., lost his office. 

150, 5. He became tutor. This statement seems to be 
an error. It is not known who the young English traveller 
was. Addison had been making arrangements to act as tutor 
and companion to Lord Hertford, son of the Duke of Somerset, 
but through a misunderstanding the plan came to nothing. 

151, 13. Sidney, Earl of Godolphin (1645-1712) was 
treasurer under James II., William III., and Anne. In her 
reign he became Lord High Treasurer, but was abruptly dis- 
missed from office in 1710. 

151, 13. John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough (1650- 
1722) was one of the most famous generals of modern times. 
In the war of the Spanish succession he won four great victo- 
ries over the French, the greatest of which was that of Blen- 
heim in 1704, when he utterly routed the French under 
Marshall Tallard. He was in high favor with Anne until 1712. 
Both he and Godolphin were Tories. 

151,20-21. the privileges . . . to Dissenters. In 1689 
was passed the Toleration Act, providing that all penalties for 
absence from the established church and for attending conven- 
ticles be withdrawn. 

153, 2. George Canning (1770-1827). In 1807 and again 
in 1822 he was Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and in 1827 became 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON ADDISON. 297 

Prime Minister. In politics he was a liberal Tory ; but when he 
was chosen Prime Minister he was deserted by many of the 
more ardent Tories, among them Lord Eldon and Lord West- 
moreland, and he found himself obliged to support a series of 
Whig measures, and to resort to the help of the Whigs to form 
a ministry. 

153, 4. Nottingham and Jersey were members of the 
Council in the reign of Anne and George I. Both were extreme 
Tories, and both were dismissed from the council when the 
moderate Tories came into power in 1704. 

153, 0. Somers, Halifax, Sunderland, and Cowper, 
on the other hand, were Whigs. Sunderland, son-in-law of the 
Duke of Marlborough, was a member of the Whig cabinet that 
fell in 1710. When, in 1717, he was made First Lord of the 
Treasury he appointed Addison Secretary of State. 

153, 24. Act of Settlement. By this act of 1701, the suc- 
cession to the English throne was secured to Sophia, electress of 
Hanover, and to her heirs who, however, must be Protestants, 
thus making it impossible for the Pretender, or any other of 
the house of Stuart, to become a ruler of Great Britain. 

154, 9. Newmarket : a fashionable race-course. 

156, 7. Haymarket: a street in the west of London 
whic'i took its name from the market of hay held there from 
the days of Queen Elizabeth to the beginning of the eighteenth 
century. 

156, 17. the poem. It was entitled The Campaign. 

156, 20. similitude of the Angel. 

" 'Twas then great Marlboro's mighty soul was prov'd, 
That, in the shock of charging hosts unmov'd, 
Amidst confusion, horror and despair, 
Examin'd all the dreadful scenes of war ; 



298 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

In peaceful thought the field of death survey'd, 
To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid, 
Inspir'd repuls'd battalions to engage, 
And taught the doubtful battle where to rage. 
So when an angel by divine command, 
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land, 
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia's past, 
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast ; 
And pleased the Almighty's orders to perform, 
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm." 

157,10. first great poet : Homer. 

158, 15. Troy : an ancient town on the coast of Asia 
Minor, near the entrance to the Hellespont and between the 
rivers Scamander and Simois. Lycia: a province of Asia 
Minor, whose people came to the rescue of Troy against the 
attack of the Greeks. 

158, 19. Sidouian fabric. The town of Sidon in Phoe- 
nicia was in ancient days famed for the quality of its metal 
works. 

158, 20. Thessalian breed. Thessaly, in the north of 
Greece, was so famed for its horses, that a likeness of a horse 
was stamped on the coins of the province. 

158, 23-24. Life-guardsman Shaw ; a noted prize-fighter 
who enlisted in the army, and fought with great courage at the 
battle of Waterloo. 

159, 3. the Mamelukes : a body of Egyptian soldiers who 
were originally Turkish slaves. They became so powerful that 
from 1254-1517 they usurped the supreme power, and from 
their own ranks elected the sultans of Egypt. Under Mourad 
Bey they still retained much power when Napoleon's army 
occupied Egypt. 

159, 18. a great struggle. The Second Punic War (b.c 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY OX ADDISON. 299 

219-b.c. 201), between the Carthaginians under Hannibal and 
Hasdrubal, and the Romans under the two Scipios, Fabius 
Maxinms and Marcellus. At the battle of Metaurus (b.c. 
209), Livius and Nero, two consuls, defeated the Carthaginians. 

160, 9. the Boyne. See note to 71, 3. 

160,11. John Philips: (1676-1709) a minor English 
poet. In 1705 he wrote a poem in praise of Marlborough, 
entitled Blenheim. See Johnson's Lives of the Poets. 

163, 7. Empress Faustina. There were two empresses, 
mother and daughter, of this name who lived about a.d. 150, 
and who were notorious for their immorality. The younger 
was the wife of Marcus Aurelius. 

164, 1-3. Dante . . . Machiavelli. Italian poets, 
writers, and statesmen of renown who lived between a.d. 1265 
and 1500. Dante (1265-1321) is the greatest of Italian poets, 
and his most celebrated work is the epic poem The Divine 
Comedy. Machiavelli (1469-1527) was a distinguished: states- 
man and writer. To him justice and humanity were nothing ; 
everything was good if it was expedient. For this reason his 
name has become a synonym for deceit and perfidy. 

164, 4. Ariosto : (1474-1533) an Italian poet to whose 
Orlando Furioso Macaulay alluded on 103, 14. Ferrara is in 
Northern Italy. 

164, 7. Valerius Flaccus and Sidonius Apollinaris 
two minor Latin poets. 

164, 10. Martial: (43-103) a well-known Roman epigram- 
matic poet. 

164, 12. Santa Croce : a church at Florence where many 
illustrious Italians, among them Galileo and Michael Angelo, 
are buried. 

164, 15. Francesca da Rimini : an Italian lady of the 



300 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

13th century who was forced by her father to marry a man 
she did not love. She was unfaithful to her husband, who 
thereupon killed her and her lover, who proved to be his own 
brother. Dante made her the heroine of a portion of his 
Inferno. See Canto V. 

164, 20. Vincenzio Filicaja : (1642-1707) his odes and 
sonnets on the expulsion of the Turks from Vienna rival those 
of the other great Italian sonnet writer, Petrarch. 

165, 14. Nicholas Rowe : (1674-1718) an English drama- 
tist, and the fifth poet-laureate. 

165, 19. Doctor Arne (1710-1778), besides setting Addi- 
son's piece to music in 1733, composed the air for Rule 
Britannia. 

166,0. The Great Seal: i.e., Lord Chancellorship. 

166, 12. Electoral Prince of Hanover: subsequently 
George I. 

166, 23. Robert Harley : (1661-1724) Earl of Oxford, 
statesman, patron of letters, and a collector of books. He held 
many important offices, such as speaker of the House of 
Commons, 1701 ; Secretary of State, 1708 ; Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, 1710; and Lord High Treasurer, 1711. In the 
reign of George I. he was accused of treason, and sent to 
the Tower of London, but was later acquitted. 

167, 2. Duchess of Marlborough (1660-1744), Sarah 
Jennings, was for many years the favorite of Queen Anne, and 
exerted the greatest influence over her. In 1710, however, as 
a result of a quarrel with Anne, she was supplanted by 
Abigail Hill. 

167,4. Captain General: Duke of Marlborough. 
167, 10. Henry Sacheverell: (1672-1724) a High Church 
divine, who in 1709 preached two sermons, one at Derby, the 



NOTES OX THE ESSAY OX AUDI SOX. 301 

other at St. Paul's, London, ridiculing the Whig ministry, and 
denouncing the Revolution. The Whigs foolishly convicted 
him of libel, and suspended his preaching for three years. His 
trial contributed not a little to the defeat of the Whig party at 
the next election in 1710. 

167,16. Thomas, Marquis of Wharton : (1648-1715) an 
eminent Whig statesman, who with others advanced the pro- 
posals for inviting over William of Orange- 

168, 14, 15. Talbot, Russell, and Bentinck are respect- 
ively the Earl of Shrewsbury, the Duke of Bedford, and the 
Duke of Portland. 

168, 17. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1708-1778). was 
one of England's greatest statesmen and orators, who will be 
remembered by Americans as a strong opponent of the harsh 
coercive measures passed by Parliament at the beginning 
of the War of Independence. See Macaulay's Essay on 
Chatham. 

168, 17. Charles James Fox (1749-1806) was perhaps the 
greatest orator of his time. He was an admirer of Napoleon, 
and opposed to the war with France. In 1782 he was leader 
of the Whigs. He was also twice a foreign ambassador. 

168, 23. Censorship of the Press. The last Act for- 
bidding the publication of any book or paper without the 
consent of the licenser appointed by the crown, expired in 
1695. 

168,24. the time: i.e., 1771. 

169, 8. The Conduct of the Allies (1711) was a tract 
written by Swift, in which he supported Harley and dis- 
credited Godolphin. It attempted to show that the war 
benefited only the allies and the English general. 

170, 6. Robert Walpole (1676-1745), was prime minister 



302 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

from 1715-1717, and again practically so from 1721-1742. 
See Macaulay\s Essay on William Pitt, Earl of Chatham: 
and Thackeray's Four Georges. 

170, 6. William Pulteney Earl of Bath (1684-1764) was 
at first a Whig and a follower of Walpole, but later became his 
enemy, and joined Bolingbroke in publishing a paper called 
the Craftsman, which violently opposed Walpole and his 
administration. Upon the fall of Walpole, in 1742, Pulteney 
was offered the office of Prime Minister, but refused it. 

170, 13. Grub Street, now Milton Street, London, was 
long the home of party scribblers, poor poets, and writers of 
libellous pamphlets. 

170, 23. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678- 
1751), a prominent statesman, orator, and philosopher, who in 
1704 became Secretary of State, and in 1710 Foreign Minister. 
On the accession of George I. he was impeached, because of 
his Jacobite tendencies, and fled to France. Though later he 
returned to England, he held no public offices. 

171, 10-11. his cassock and his pudding sleeves: 
i.e., because he was in holy orders. 

172, 14. Nemesis : the Greek goddess of vengeance. 

172, 23. Lady Mary Wortley-Montague (1689-1762), a 
beautiful and brilliant literary woman of the 18th century, 
and a great favorite of the Whigs, is best remembered for her 
letters, remarkable for their style and good judgment, written 
to the most celebrated men and women of her time. She was 
the wife of Edward W. Montague, ambassador to Turkey, 
and a cousin of Henry Fielding the great novelist. 

173, 6. Stella was the name by which Swift called Hester 
Johnson, a woman with whom he was in love throughout his 
life, and with whom he kept up an elaborate correspondence. 



NOTES ON THE ESSAY ON ADDISON. 303 

173, 8. Richard Steele (1672-1729), essayist, dramatist, 
and politician, will forever be associated with Addison as joint 
author of the Tatler and the Spectator. See Macaulay's de- 
scription of him on page 178. 

173, 11. Terenoe and Catullus. Latin poets, the one 
noted for his style, the other for his wit. 

173, 14. Edward Young (1683-1765), a gloomy and seri- 
ous poet, is now remembered by his Night Thoughts. 

174, 8. criticisms on Mr. Softley's sonnet. See 
Tatler, No. 163. 

174, 9. dialogue with the politician. See Spectator, 
Nos. 567, 568. 

174, 22. St. Paul's : the cathedral church of London. 

176, 18. Boswell. See note to 100, 1. William War- 
burton (1698-1779), bishop of Gloucester, was an ardent 
admirer of Richard Hurd (1720-1808), and wrote his life. 

177, 1, 2. Eustace Budgell: (1686-1737) a miscellaneous 
writer who contributed about thirty-seven papers to the 
Spectator. Before drowning himself in the Thames, he wrote 
on a slip of paper : " What Cato did and Addison approved, 
cannot be wrong." 

177, 20. Ambrose Philips (1675-1749) wrote Pastorals, 
a tragedy entitled The Distressed Mother, and many of the 
papers of the Freethinker, which he established. See Tatler, 
No. 12 ; Spectator, Nos. 290 and 335 ; Guardian, No. 40. 

178, 2. Thomas Tickell (1686-1740), a poet, translator, 
and politician, was associated with Addison in a few numbers 
of the Spectator, wrote an Elegy on his death, and published 
an edition of his works. 

178, 24. spunging-house : " the bailiff's house, where 
persons arrested for debt were lodged for twenty-four hours, 



304 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

before being taken to jail, so as to allow their friends an 
opportunity to settle their debts." 

179, 14. Richard Savage (1(398-1743), a mediocre and dis- 
sipated poet, for a short time an intimate friend of Johnson. 
See Johnson's Lives of the Poets. 

180, 2, 3. Dr. Harrison. See note to 204, 15. 

180, 23. Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), a French sceptic, who 
edited a Dictionnaire historique et critique, embodying his scepti- 
cal views on all subjects. Addison is said to have had this book 
constantly by him. 

181, 9. Thomas Tickell. See note to 178, 2. 

181, 17. the rival bulls. See Virgil's Georgics III., 
220-225. 

181, 19. Wharton. See note to 167, 16. 

182, 3. Budgell. See note to 177, 1, 2. 

184. Gazetteer. An official who publishes news by 
authority. 

184, 13. Sunderland. See note to 153, 9. 

184, 24. Will's and the Grecian. Coffee-houses. See 
note to 120, 18. 

185, 2. pasquinades. Satires, lampoons. 

185, 24. Paul Pry, or Mr. Samuel Pickwick. Pry is a 
character in one of Poole's once popular plays. Pickwick is the 
hero of Dickens's Pickwick Papers. 

186, 2. Partridge. Swift had diverted London by pre- 
dicting the death of Partridge, and then, on the day set, an- 
nouncing his death and the circumstances attending it. Poor 
Partridge was indignant, but foolishly kept insisting in his 
Almanac that he was not dead. 

187,1. St. George's Channel. The sea between England 
and Ireland. 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON ADDISON. 305 

187,14. Sir William Temple (1028-1699). A statesman 
and patron of men of letters, who is best remembered for nego- 
tiating the Triple Alliance. Swift, as a young man, acted as 
his private secretary. 

187, 18. Horace Walpole (1717-1797), son of Robert 
Walpole, was a voluminous writer, but is now chiefly remem- 
bered for his romance called The Castle of Otranto. 

187, 19. half German jargon: an allusion to the style 
of Carlyle in his translations of Wilhelm Meister, etc. 

187, 25. Meander: (about b.c. 300) a Greek drama- 
tist of whose comedies, supposed to have numbered upwards 
of 100, only fragments are extant. 

188, 2. Abraham Cowley (1618-1607) was formerly 
considered a clev^er and delightful poet, but is little read now. 
Samuel Butler : (1612-1080) a great wit but a small poet. 
His Hudibras is a clever burlesque and satire on the Puritans 
and Independents. 

188, 4. Sir Godfrey Kneller : (1646-1723) portrait- 
painter of the court of James II. 

188, 19. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon (1608-1674) 
was Chancellor of the Exchequer and Lord Chancellor 
respectively under Charles I. and Charles II. He wrote a 
History of the Great Rebellion, which, though faulty as a work 
of history, shows Clarendon's great skill in the delineation of 
character. 

188, 24. Cervantes (1547-1616), the most celebrated of 
Spanish writers, wrote the world-famed novel Don Quixote. 

189, 14. Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1094- 
1778), prolific French writer, who, besides works on science, 
philosophy, and history, wrote a number of dramas and poems. 

190, 16. Jack Pudding: a coarse, vulgar fellow, a stage 
buffoon. 



306 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

191, 2. Abbe Coyer (1707-1782) wrote several unim- 
portant works, but this letter, a forgery of Voltaire's style, 
became celebrated. Pansophe was a fictitious personage. 

191, 4, John Arbuthnot (1(367-1735) was Queen Anne's 
physician, a politician and a patron of letters. He was a friend 
of Pope and Swift, and being himself a man of great wit and 
wisdom, frequently, says Wharton, gave hints to those writers. 
See Pope's Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. 

191, lOff. The World, the Connoisseur .... the 
Mirror, . . the Lounger — were periodical essay papers of 
the 18th century, conducted on the plan of Addison's and 
Steele's Tatler and Spectator. 

192, 8. Mephistopheles : an evil spirit, ranking next to 
Satan. He plays a conspicuous part both in Marlowe's Dr. 
Faustus and Goethe's Faust. 

192, 10. Puck : a mischievous, merry little fairy in 
Shakspere's Midsummer Night's Dream. Soame Jenyns : 
(1704-1787) a minor poet and witty miscellaneous writer, 
author of a poem called The Art of Dancing and A Review of 
the Internal Evidences of Christianity. 

193, 12. Bettesworth : an Irish victim of Swift's bitter 
satire. See the Yahoo's Overthrow'. Franc de Pompignan 
(1709-1784) was so fiercely satirized by Voltaire that he was 
forced to retire from Paris to the country. 

193, 24. Jeremy Collier: (1650-1726) a courageous 
nonjuriug bishop, who in 1698 published A Short View of the 
Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage. 

194, 2. George Etherege (1635-1091) was a licentious 
playwright, whose best known plays are Love in a Tub, She 
Would if She Could, and The Man of Mode. 

194, 3. William Wycherley (1640-1716) was a brilliant, 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON ADDISON. 307 

witty, though profligate poet and dramatist. His best plays 
are Love in the Wood, The Country Wife, and the Plain 
Dealer. 

194. 12. Congreve. See note to 121, 4. 

194, 12. Sir John Vanbrugh (1 004-1720) was a witty 
but licentious playwright, contemporary with Wicherley and 
Congreve. He was also an architect, and built Blenheim 
Palace, the residence of the Duke of Marlborough. 

195, off. Tom Folio, etc. For these sketches, see the 
Tatler, Nos. 155, 158, 103, 250, 220, 249, 254. 

195, 12, George Smalridge, (1003-1719), an eminent 
divine and preacher, was Bishop of Bristol from 1714-1719. 

195, 17. Sacheverell See note to 167, 10. 

196, 11. a war, etc.: i.e., the war of the Spanish suc- 
cession (1700-1714). 

196, 18ff. Outbreaks ... in 1820 and in 1831 : i.e., 
the Peterloo Massacre, August, 1819. In 1831 there were several 
serious riots, during one of which the town of Bristol was 
burnt. These riots were the outcome of discussions on the 
lieform Bill. 

197, 0. Versailles and Marli. Palaces not far from 
Paris. 

197, 7. the Pretender: i.e. : son of James II. See note 
to 71. 18. 

197, 8. Harley. See note to 166, 23. 
197, 10. Sunderland. See note to 153, 9. 
197, 10. Godolphin. » See note to 151, 13. 

197, 17. White Staff: i.e., the badge of office carried by 
the lord treasurer. 

198, 24. the government, etc.: i.e., Lord North's govern- 
ment (1770-1782). 



308 MAC AUL AY'S ESSAYS. 

199, 3. Walcheren : an island near the coast of Holland. 
In 1809 an expedition of 40,000 men was sent from England to 
destroy the docks and shipping of Antwerp. It was found 
that the French were there in such great numbers that the 
attempt had to be given up, though Flushing was taken. 1600 
men were left in Flanders, but more than half of them died 
in the swamps. 

199, 13. a great lady : i.e., the Countess of Warwick. 

200, 2o. the Whig Examiner : was a political periodical 
(No. 1, Sept. 14, 1710) written in opposition to Swift's Ex- 
aminer. 

201, 18. Ambrose Philips. See note to 177, 20. 

202, 6. Isaac Bickerstaff : i.e., Steele. See page 54, 1. 1. 
foil. 

203, lOff. Will's, etc. See note to 120, 18. 

204, 5. Will Honeycomb. See Spectator, No. 2. 

204, 14. Samuel Richardson (1689-1701) rose from the 
position of typesetter and printer to be ranked as one of the 
greatest of England's early novelists. He won fame and popu- 
larity first by the publication, in 1740, of a novel called Pamela, 
which he surpassed in 1749 by Clarissa Harloive. 

204, 15. Henry Fielding (1707-1754) is considered the 
greatest of England's early novelists. His Tom Jones is even 
thought by many critics to be the best piece of prose fiction in 
the English language. 

204, 16. Tobias George Smollett (1721-1771) was a 
novelist, historian, and poet. His chief novels are Roderick 
Random, Humphrey Clinker, and Peregrine Pickle. He wrote 
also a " History of England." His poetry has little merit. 

205, 3. Mohawks : the name given to ruffians, and often 
dissipated men of rank, who went about the streets of London 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON ADDISON. 309 

after nightfall, and insulted and injured unprotected people. 
See Spectator, Nos. 324, 335, 347. 

205, 5. the Distressed Mother : a play by Ambrose 
Philips. See Spectator, No. 335. 

205, 8. jack : a young pike. 

206, 2. three-sevenths. Of the entire 635 numbers of 
the Spectator, Addison wrote 274. 

206, 17. Lucian: (about a.d. 120-200) a Greek writer. 
206, 19. Scheherezade was the wife of the Sultan Schah- 
rich and the teller of the Arabian Nights. 

206, 20. La Bruyere : (1645-169(3) a French writer who 
has wonderfully depicted character in his Characters in the 
Manner of Theophratus. 

206,23. Horatian pleasantry. Horace (b.c. 64-b.c. 7), 
a clever and satirical Latin poet. 

207, 3. Jean Baptiste Massillon (1663-1742) was a dis- 
tinguished French preacher. 

207, 10. the Abbey. See note to 106, 7. See also 
Spectator, Nos. 26 and 329. the Exchange. Read Spectator, 
Nos. 69, 317, 159, 343, 517. 

208, 6. Chevy Chase. Read Spectator, Nos. 70 and 74. 
208, 12. stamp tax : of one penny (2 cents) on each half 

sheet was imposed in 1713. 

208, 20. bohea: a kind of tea. 

209, 2. the population of England was then (1712) 
about 6,000,000. 

209, 10. books on farriery: i.e., on doctoring and shoe- 
ing horses. 

209, 15. At the close of 1712. The Spectator ceased 
with No. 555, Dec. 1, 1712. It was resumed again, June 18, 
1714, with No. 556, and continued to No. 600, Sept. 29, 1714. 



310 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

210, 3. the Guardian. See note to 132, 13. Nestor 
Ironsides was the assumed name under which Steele wrote 
the Guardian. He posed as the guardian of the Lizard family. 

210, 13. his Cato. This play, dealing with the death of 
M. Porcius Cato, and with his opposition to Julius Csesar, was 
first acted in 1713. 

211, 12. William Charles Macready: (1793-1873) one of 
England's greatest actors. He was manager of Drury Lane 
Theatre from 1841 to 1843. 

211, 13. Juba and Marcia are characters in the play. 

211, 18. Barton Booth (1681-1733) was considered the 
foremost actor of his time. 

211, 21. the pit: the middle and back of the ground 
floor. In English theatres the pit is one of the cheapest 
places from which to view a performance. 

211, 22. Inns of Court were the residences of young 
lawyers and law students. 

212, 2. Jonathan's and G-arraway's : London coffee- 
houses, frequented by merchants and brokers. 

212, 16. Kit Cat. See note to 130, 24. 

212, 17. the October : a Tory club. 

213, 5. Sir Gibby: i.e., Sir Gilbert Heathcoat. 

213, 18. Samuel Garth: (1661-1719) a physician who 
occasionally wrote poetry. His best known poem is the Dis- 
pensary. It was he who originated dispensaries. 

215, 5. Frederick Schiller : (1759-1805) a celebrated Ger- 
man poet and dramatist, author of Wallenstein, Wilhrtm Tell, 
etc. 

215, 9. Athalie or Saul. The first is a play by Racine, 
the second by Alfieri. 

215, 10-12. Cinna was considered Corneille's best play. 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON ADDISON. 311 

Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) is known as "the father of 
French tragedy." His chief plays are Le Cid, Cinna, Medee, 
and Pohjeucte. 

215, 13. Vittorio Alfieri : (1740-1803) an Italian dramatist 
whose chief tragedies, based on Greek models, are Saul, Anti- 
gone, Philip II., and Agamemnon. 

215, 14. Racine. See note to 131, 10. 

215, 23. John Dennis : (1657-1734) a poor poet and a 
sour critic. 

217, 4. Essay on Criticism. See Spectator, No. 253. 

217, 13. extolled Pope's Miscellaneous pieces. See 
Spectator, 523. 

218, 5. on Atticus. This is Pope's attack on Addison in 
the Prologue to his Satires, on Sporus : i.e., on Lord Hervey, 
in the same Prologue. 

220, 14. the Englishman : begun in January, 1714. 

221, 7. the first number of the new series : June 18. 
See note to 209, 15. 

221, 18. the death of Anne: Aug. 1st, 1714. 

222. 19. Sir James Mackintosh : (1765-1832) a cele- 
brated Scotch philosopher, statesman, historian, and miscel- 
laneous writer. 

223,13. Lord John Russell: (1792-1878) a prominent 
and influential English statesman, and an able supporter of 
free trade. He held office almost continually ; was Prime 
Minister and Whig leader from 1846-52. Sir Robert Peel : 
(1788-1850) a prominent "Tory statesman, and Prime Minister 
from 1834-35, and from 1841-46. Among his many important 
works may be mentioned the establishment of the police 
system. "Hence the slang expressions 'bobby' and 'peeler' 
for policemen." Henry Temple, Viscount Palmerston : 



312 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

(1784-1865) a prominent Whig statesman, who was Prime 
Minister from 1855-58. 

225, 17. the Tale of a Tub : (1704) a great religious 
saterical work by Jonathan Swift, which ridiculed in the 
persons of Peter, Luther, and Jack (John Calvin) the vices 
and corruptions of the Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and 
Calvinists. Had Swift not written this satire he would most 
likely have become a bishop. 

226, 6. an ecclesiastical dignity of no great value. 
Swift rose no higher in the church than to be dean of St. 
Patrick's. 

226 1 5—1 8 

' 'n Then shun we, e'en amid the thickest fight, 

Each other's lance ; enough there are for me 
Of Trojans and their brave allies to kill, 
As heaven may aid me, and my speed on foot ; 
And Greeks enough there are for thee to slay, 
If so indeed thou canst." Iliad, Bk. 6, 11. 226-229. 
(Earl of Derby's translation. 

229, 10. Squire Western: a jolly, sport-loving country 
gentleman in Fielding's Tom Jones. See note to 204:, 15. 

229,16. the Town Talk. This together with the Crisis 
and the Reader were short lived political periodical papers by 
Steele. 

231, 10. the Rosicrucian mythology. The Rosicru- 
cians were a sect of mystical philosophers supposed to have 
been founded in the 14th century in Germany by one named 
Rosenkrenz. In the 17th century they caused considerable 
discussion. They formed themselves into a secret society, 
believing that spirits of different kinds inhabited the air, earth, 
water, and fire, and endeavored to discover the true phi- 
losophy by means of mysticism. 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON ADDISON. 313 

232, 17. Mark Akenside : (1721-1770) a minor English 
poet and miscellaneous writer. His best work is The Pleas- 
ures of Imagination, a rather long- and diffuse poem, the 
object of which was to show that the pleasures of imagination 
arise from the perception of beauty and greatness. Akenside 
recast the poem but died before completing it. 

233, 6. Johann Gottfried von Herder: (1744-1803,) a 
celebrated German scholar, author, and theologian. Johann 
Wolfgang von Goethe: (1749-1832) the greatest poet of 
Germany, and a philosopher and scientist of importance. 
His greatest work is the tragedy of Faust. He wrote also 
Werther, Wilhelm Meister, Egmont, and Iphigenia, and many 
other works. 

233, 8. David Hume: (1711-1776) a distinguished Scotch 
historian, philosopher, and miscellaneous writer. His best 
works are History of England, and a Treatise on Human 
Nature. 

233, 8. Robertson. See note to 136, 6. 

235, 4. thou art translated: i.e., changed. 

238, 11, 12. the Satirist and the Age were unimportant 
weekly papers of the year 1838. 

238, 24. the Duke of Chandos : a distinguished noble of 
the earlier years of the 18th century. For Pope's lampoon see 
Moral Essays, Epistle IV. 1. 99 seq., where Canons means the 
seat of the Duke of Chandos. See also Life of Pope by Leslie 
Stephen. 

239, 1. Aaron Hill" (1685-1750) a minor poet and his- 
torian, and also projector of impracticable schemes. See Pope's 
Dunciad, Bk. II. 1. 295, seq. 

241, 6. brilliant and energetic lines. Read Pope's 
Epistle to Doctor Arbuthnot, lines 194-214. 



314 MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. 

242, 10, 11. Sir Peter Teazle . . . Mr. Joseph Sur- 
face : characters in Sheridan's comedy School for Scandal. 
Surface is an artful and perfect hypocrite. 

244, 1. Chelsea: a suburb of London. 

244, 2. Nell Gwynn: one of the mistresses of Charles I. 
As a girl she was a wandering singer and mendicant and later 
an actress. 

245, 6. Lycidas : the name under which Milton mourns 
the death of his friend Edward King, who was drowned in 1637 
in St. George's Channel, on the Irish coast. The poem Lycidas 
is admitted to be the finest elegy in the English language. 

245, 13. a brother: his second brother, Gulston. 

245, 17. "William Somerville : (1675-1742) a country 
gentleman, justice of the peace and a dabbler in poetry. He 
wrote The Two Springs, The Chase, Rural Games, Field 
Sports, etc. 

247, 4. Vincent Bourne. See note to 136, 14. 
247,9. James Craggs : (1686-1721) a young statesman 

who died early in life after making an immense fortune in the 
South Sea Bubble. He was a patron of letters. 

247,16. Joseph Hume: (1777-1855). In 1812 and in 
1830 he was a member of parliament. He was an incorrupti- 
ble and strict financier, and kept so constant and so keen an 
eye upon public expenditures that it became almost impos- 
sible for jobbers and place-hunters to secure unjust grants. 

248, 18. the Countess Dowager: i.e., Charlotte, Coun- 
tess of Warwick. 

248, 20. Rich : the family name of the Earl of Holland, 
her first husband. 

250,8. The celebrated bill: i.e., the Peerage Bill, to 
restrict the crown in the creation of new peers. 



NOTES TO THE ESSAY ON ADDISON. 315 

250, 13. Prime Minister: i.e., the Earl of Sunderland. 

251, 5, 6. Swamping . . . the Upper House was done 
by creating a sufficient number of new peers to change the 
vote in the House of Lords. The power to create peers lies in 
the sovereign, who can thus govern the Upper House. 

252, 24. by Johnson. See his Life of Addison. 

253, 7. the Duenna : a comic opera by Sheridan, 1775. 
253, 8. Newton. See note to 9, 8. 

253, 15. Henry Norris : a celebrated English comedian 
who was known as "Jubilee Dicky " from having taken the 
part of Dicky, in a play called the Trip to the Jubilee. 

255, 9. John Gay : (1685-1732) a poet and dramatist of 
some ability. He is best remembered as the author of The 
Shepherd's Week, the Beggar's Opera (1728) and his Fables. 

257, 2. son-in-law: i.e., the Earl of Warwick. 
257, 19. Of the Psalms : i.e., Psalm No. XXIH. 

258, 5. Jerusalem Chamber, in Westminster Abbey, 
probably so called from the subjects of the tapestry with 
which the room was hung. 

259, 3. William Cowper : (1731-1800) a distinguished 
poet. Besides the Task, John Gilpin, and some minor pieces, 
he is remembered as the author of the Olney Hymns. 

259, 19. defective. The Drummer, the Old Whig, and 
the Trial and Conviction of Count Tariff, are omitted. 

260, 5. our own time ; i.e., 1809. 

260, 10. Everlasting Club, etc. See Spectator, Nos. 72, 
584, 585. 



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